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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES. 

Edited by W. T. Harris. 



It is proposed to publish, under the above title, a library for teachers 
and school managers, and text-books for normal classes. The aim will 
be to provide works of a useful practical character in the broadest sense. 
The following conspectus will show the ground to be covered by the series: 

I.— History of Education. (a.) Original systems as ex- 
pounded by their founders, (b.) Critical histories which set forth the 
customs of the past and point out their advantages and defects, explain- 
ing the grounds of their adoption, and also of their final disuse. 

II. — Educational Criticism, (a.) The noteworthy arraign- 
ments which educational reformers have put forth against existing sys- 
tems : these compose the classics of pedagogy, (b.) The critical histories 
above mentioned. 

III.— Systematic Treatises on the Theory of Edu- 
cation, (a.) Works written from the historical standpoint; these, 
for the most part, show a tendency to justify the traditional course of 
study and to defend the prevailing methods of instruction, (b.) Works 
written from critical standpoints, and to a greater or less degree revolu- 
tionary in their tendency. 

IV. — The Art of Education, (a.) Works on instruction 
and discipline, and the practical details of the school-room, (b.) Works 
on the organization and supervision of schools. 

Practical insight into the educational methods in vogue can not be 
attained without a knowledge of the process by which they have come to 
be established. For this reason it is proposed to give special prominence 
to the history of the systems that have prevailed. 

Again, since history is incompetent to furnish the ideal of the future, 
it is necessary to devote large space to works of educational criticism. 
Criticism is the purifying process by which ideals arc rendered clear and 
potent, so that progress becomes possible. 

History and criticism combined make possible a theory of the whole. 
For, with an ideal toward which the entire movement tends, and an ac- 
count of the phases that have appeared in time, the connected develop- 
ment of the whole can be shown, and all united into one system. 

Lastly, after the science, comes the practice. The art of education is 
treated in special works devoted to the devices and technical details use- 
ful in the school-room. 

It is believed that the teacher does not need authority so much as in- 
sight in matters of education. When he understands the theory of edu- 
cation and the history of its growth, and has matured his own point 
of view by careful study of the critical literature of education, then he is 
competent to select or invent such practical devices as are best adapted 
to his own wants. 

The series will contain works from European as well as American 
authors, and will be under the editorship of W. T. Harris, A. M., LL. D. 



Vol. I. The Philosophy of jEducation. By Johaiw Karl Fried- 

RICH KOSENKRANZ. $1.50. 

Vol. II. A History of Education. By Professor F. V. N. Painter, 

of Koanoke, Virginia. $1.50. 
Vol. III. The Rise and Early Constitution of Universities. 

With a Survey of Mediaeval Education. By S. S. Laurie, LL. D., 
ProfeMor of the Institutes and History of Education in the University 
of Edinburgh. $1.50. 

Vol. IV. The Ventilation and Warming of School Buildings. 
By Gilbert B. Morrison, Teacher of Physics and Chemistry in Kan- 
sas City High School. 75 cents. 

Vol. V. The Education of Man. By Friedricii Froebel. Trans- 
lated from the German and annotated by W. N. Hailmann, Superin- 
tendent of Public Schools at La Porte, Indiana. $1.50. 

Vol. VI. Elementary Psychology and Education. By Joseph 
Baldwin, Principal of the Sam Houston State Normal School, Huuts- 
vilie, Texas. $1.50. 

Vol. VII. The Senses and the Will. Observations concerning the 
Mental Development of the Human Being in the l?irst Years of Life. 
By W. Preyer, Professor of Physiology in Jena. 'Iranslated from 
the original German, by H. W. Brown, Teacher in the State Normal 
School at Worcester, Mass. Part I of The Mind of the Child. $1.50. 

Vol. VIII. Memory. What it is and how to improve it. By David 
Kay, F. E. G. S. $1.50. 

Vol. IX. The Development of the Intellect. Observations con- 
cerning the Mental Development of the Human Being in the First 
Years of Life. By W. Preyer, Professor of Physiology in Jena. 
Translated from the original German, by H. W. Brown, Teacher in 
the State Normal School at Worcester, Mass. Part II of The Mind 
of the Child. $1.50. 

Vol. X. How to Study Geography. By Francis W. Parker. 
Prepared for the Professional Training Class' of the Cook County Nor- 
mal School. $1.50. 

Vol. XI. Education in the United States. Its History from tho 
Earliest Settlements. By Kicuard G. Boone, A. M., Professor of 
Pedagogy in Indiana University. $1.50. 

Vol. XII. European Schools. Or what I saw in the Schools of Ger- 
many, France, Austna, and Switzerland. By L. E. Klemm, Ph. D., 
Author of " Chips from a Teacher's Workshop," and numerous school- 
books. $2.00. 

Vol. XIII. Practical Hints for the Teachers of Public Schools. 
By George Howland, Superintendent of the Chicago Schools. $1.00. 

Vol. XIV. Pestalozzi : His Iiife and Work. By Eoger De Guimps. 
Authorized translation from the second French edition, by J. Eussell, 
B. A., Assistant Master in University College School, London. With 
an Introduction by Ecv. E. H. Quick, M. A. $1.50. 

Vol. XV. School Supervision. By J. L. Pickard, LL. D. $1.00. 

Vol. XVI. Higher Education of Women in Europe. By Helene 
Lanqe, Berlin. Translated and accompanied by Comparative Statis- 
tics, by L. E. Klemm, Ph. D. $1.00. 

Vol. XVII. Essays oa Educational Reformers. By Eobert He- 
bert Quick, M. A. Trin. Coll., Cambridge, Formerly Assistant Master 
at Harrow, and Lecturer on the History of Education at Cambridge, 
late Vicar of Sedbergh. Only authorized edition of the work as rewrit- 
ten in 1890. $1.50. 




Infematioiml €inxmtkn BmtB 

EDITED BY 

WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A.M., LL.D. 



VoLmiE III. 



INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES ,, 

1/ 



THE 

RISE AND EARLY CONSTITUTION 
^f^" OF UNIYERSITIES 

J ^ WITH A 

SUEYEY OF MEDIJEYAL EDUCATION 



BY 

S. S. LAURIE, LL. D. 

PROFESSOR OP THE INSTITUTES AND HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THB 
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 



NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET 
1891. 



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Copyright, 1886, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 

»- ■■ -^v 

JUL 13 W9 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



In the history of the rise and organization of 
universities the student of education finds the most 
interesting- and suggestive topic in the entire range 
of his specialty. For, in the history of the develop- 
ment of the higher and highest education, he sees 
the definite modes by which the contributions of 
the past to the well-being of the present have been 
transmitted. The school undertakes to endow the 
youth with the acquisitions of his race, or, rather, 
to qualify him to undertake this acquisition for him- 
self. It therefore arms him with the proper habits 
of study and co-operation by discipline. It instructs 
him in those elementary branches of knowledge 
which serve as keys to the whole treasury of learn- 
ing. Every study holds its place because of its claim 
to present an epitome of a department of knowledge, 
transmitting its net results — like geography, his- 
tory, or grammar ; or else because it gives the mas- 
tery of some art necessary to such transmission — as 
in the case of the arts of reading and writing or 
numerical calculation. 



Vi EDITOR'S PREFACE, 

What did the ancients fix upon as the course of 
study in their schools? In what way have we va- 
ried from their curriculum ? These important ques- 
tions being- answered, we wish to ascertain the 
practical and theoretical reasons which have pre- 
vailed and which now prevail in the selection of 
these branches of study in our schools. In this 
inquiry the university is the central theme. Its first 
beginnings at Athens, Alexandria, and Rome, its 
revival in the middle ages, and its modern expan- 
sion show us the status of this question of the course 
of study, and much more. They acquaint us with 
the history of methods of organization, of disci- 
pline, and of instruction. The epoch included be- 
tween the fifth century B. c, and the fifteenth cent- 
ury A. D., too, is marked by the culmination of the 
Greek and Roman civilizations and their transmuta- 
tion into Christianity, and it possesses for all Chris- 
tian civilizations a supreme interest. 

The Greeks first make a literature and then be- 
gin to develop science, or, in other words, to dis- 
cover through reflection the forms, laws, or methods 
of human activity. Through the efforts of the 
sophists and schools of philosophy, grammar, rheto- 
ric, and logic arise. These three products of reflec- 
tion presuppose a literature as already existing, and 
exhibit in a systematic form the normal types of 
language and thought. Hence they constitute a 
basis for criticism, and at the same time furnish ma- 
terial for education. For education is inconceivable 
without normal types, models, or ideals to which 



EDITOR 'S PRE FA CE. 



Vll 



the pupil is to be taught to conform. There must 
be a standard before him, or else he can not be 
trained, either in will or in intellect. 

Grammar, as it appears, expounds the forms of 
speech, written and printed, or spoken ; it deals with 
the elements of expression of ideas. Rhetoric, on 
the other hand, shows the forms of presentation of 
ideas; while logic treats of the forms of thinking 
ideas. Here we have three sciences or arts that 
deal with forms. 

It seems that the course of instruction in the 
trivium and quadrivium was established under Al- 
exander the Great, and that the labors of Isocrates, 
Aristotle, and Theophrastus stand accredited with 
much influence in its adoption. The trivium in- 
cluded the three formal sciences just named — gram- 
mar, rhetoric and dialectic, and furnished the foun- 
dation of intellectual education. The quadrivium 
included arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and mu- 
sic — four branches relating mostly to nature, and in 
contrast with the studies of the trivium, which relate 
to human nature or man. 

As practically taught, grammar included a study 
of the poets and prose writers, and, besides gram- 
matical forms, looked incidentally toward the mean- 
ing and substance of thought. What was known 
of history was also brought in under this topic. 

Rhetoric, likewise, was made to include much 
besides the forms of literary works, for it necessarily 
considered questions of human nature as the object 
toward which hterary form is directed. It looked 



Viii EDITOR'S PREFACE. 

into the moral grounds of action, and considered 
the cultivation of the statesman and the science of 
politics. 

Dialectic included chiefly logic, but expanded 
also into metaphysics, and even reached, in thor- 
ough schools, physics and ethics. 

Arithmetic included numerical calculation of an 
elementary character, and a variety of numerical 
data useful in business, trade, and the keeping oi 
the calendar. Geometry included a few definitions 
and theorems from Euclid, and then branched off 
into geography. Astronomy included much that 
we are in the habit of studying under the head of 
natural philosophy. 

Music had originally included all the branches 
of intellectual and moral education — all depart- 
ments presided over by the Nine Muses. Early 
Greek education included gymnastics and music — 
the latter used in this wide sense. In the course of 
time the scope of this branch of study was gradu- 
ally limited, and its subjects transferred to other 
departments. 

What strikes us as especially noteworthy in the 
history of education is the predominance of the 
studies that relate to dry forms — dry to the pupil, 
because they relate to what is general and not to 
what is particular and personal in its interest for him. 

These dry, formal studies have to be learned 
with hard labor. For the reason that they are 
much discredited in some recent theories of educa- 
tion, it is very important to note the fact that is 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. ix 

made manifest in this history of the university that 
the formal studies of the trivium and quadrivium 
have furnished the staple of secondary and higher 
education from the first schools in classic times 
down to the present. An effort should be made to 
ascertain with greater precision what their effect 
on the mind really is. This is not the place to dis- 
cuss the topic, but rather to point out the interest- 
ing lesson which history offers us. The general re- 
mark may be offered that the study of forms leads 
to the habit of generalization. Grammar, rhetoric, 
and logic may be forgotten soon after school, but 
even a superficial course in these branches leads to 
some acquirement of the mental habit of looking at 
the form or method or law of a phenomenon. With- 
out this habit, the mind follows only the succession 
of details and soon gets lost. 

Arithmetic deals with the most general form of 
succession, the form of time; geometry, in like 
manner, to the forms of what is extended in space. 
Thus these two studies of the quadrivium are funda- 
mental as regards the form of inorganic nature. 

Formal studies seem to be of the nature of seeds, 
not so valuable in their immediate and direct sig- 
nificance as in their fruitage in a distant harvest. 

Again, the becoming of Christian civilization is 
to be traced in this history. In the first ten centu- 
ries of our era, there is a reaction against the old 
world which had to be supplanted. There is not 
much certainty as to what may be accepted and 
brought over from the old into the new. The triv- 



X EDITOR'S PREFACE. 

ium and quadrivium, with some curtailment and 
some substitution, is generally accepted, but there 
must be new applications made of these formal arts. 
It became necessary to discover the lines of rela- 
tion which the new world-principle of Christianity 
holds to those seven liberal arts as well as to the 
substantial life of the old heathenism as it had 
survived in civil laws and literature. Hence arose 
the three great bodies of learning on which was 
founded the modern university as a structure rising 
above the groundwork in the trivium and quad- 
rivium. The first was theology. The Church, 
spurred on by the influx of heresy from Saracen 
schools, was led to survey carefully the relation of 
the principle of Christianity to the world of man 
and nature, and to incorporate the whole investiga- 
tion into one body of learning under the head of 
theology. In the next place, the needs of govern- 
ment on the secular side led to a study of the ad- 
ministration of justice, and, attention being turned 
to the study of Roman law, the Pandects of Justin- 
ian are rediscovered and Irnerius at Bologna initi- 
ates the thorough study of law as described in the 
eighth lecture of this history. Theology found its 
center at Paris (see Lecture IX). Medicine at Sa- 
lerno had the honor of establishing the first univer- 
sity in the modern sense of an institution devoted 
to special studies (Lectures VI and VII). The 
study of nature, natural science, is the especial de- 
partment cultivated in this body of learning. The 
trivium and quadrivium elevate their disciplines 



EDITOR'S PREFACE, xi 

into philosophy, which takes rank as one of the four 
co-ordinate "faculties" in the modern university; 
the preparatory work done in the primary and sec- 
ondary schools falling also into more elementary 
stages of these " seven liberal arts." 

Another phase of interest in this history is that 
of its organization and methods of instruction. Its 
independence of municipal and other local author- 
ity is of great significance in its influence on the 
growth of individual liberty and a spirit of personal 
independence. Supported by the most general 
power of the state, and even by the spiritual head 
of all Christendom, the university developed a spirit 
of free thought such as could never have grown so 
rapidly under the control of local authorities. The 
congress of scholars from all parts of the world led 
to mutual toleration as regards national peculiari- 
ties, and the rise of fraternal sympathy between the 
learned of all peoples. The method of instruction, 
whose nerve lay in debate or discussion — a dialec- 
tic of contending minds — was a still more powerful 
incitement to free thought. The student was com- 
pelled to see all sides of his subject, and, what is 
more, to defend them by marshalling all their strong 
points. In the history of the methods of the Jesuits, 
a comparatively recent chapter in educational his- 
tory, the most instructive parts are those that re- 
late to this dialectic contest, and to the strict per- 
sonal surveillance exercised over the pupils. The 
history of the university exhibits both of these in 
full relief. 



xii EDITOR'S PREFACE. 

The origin of degrees and their significance at 
different periods is lilcewise to be found in this his- 
tory. The A. B. and A. M. degrees relate in set 
terms to the trivium and quadrivium, while theol- 
ogy, law, and medicine have their corresponding 
titles. 

Attention is to be called to the auxiliary influences 
on the student which flow from residence in colleges 
and hostels set apart from the community, quite as 
much isolated, in fact, as the monastery. The dress 
of the student, too, his gown and cap, accent this 
isolation from the current life of his people. More- 
over, he makes this separation deeper by devoting 
most of his strength to the study of ancient writers, 
and revives within the institution ancient manners 
and customs as well as ancient languages. This 
self-alienation (Selbstentfj-eindung as German writers 
have called it) is the most powerful of all influences 
on the character of the student. It gives him the 
power to look upon the civilization of his people in 
which he has been nurtured, as something foreign 
to himself, and hence enables him to study it or see 
readily its peculiarities and take a survey of it as a 
whole. This is an important mental acquisition. 
But if the residence at the university is too long- 
continued, the student loses his elasticity, and can 
not recover his practical status in the life of his 
people. 

Another most important feature of the univer- 
sity study is the influence for conservatism — quite a 
different influence from the one developed by the 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. xiii 

dialectic discussions mentioned above. All formal 
studies tend to fix the character and convictions be- 
cause they relate to what is universal — to what is 
permanent under the variable. The routine of the 
trivium and quadrivium involves much memoriz- 
ing. All memorizing is conservative in its tend- 
ency. It fills the mind with images and ideas al- 
ready made and fixed. 

But, on the other hand, the routine work, with its 
memorizing, deals with what is fundamental in the 
nature of the world and of reason itself, and hence 
is essentially rational. Although its conservatism 
opposes the advance of truth, yet it holds fast to 
the rational which the w^orld has already achieved, 
and this body of truth is alwa3^s much greater than 
the bulk of new truths discovered in any one gen- 
eration. 

In the following analysis of the contents of the 
lectures of this volume, I have endeavored to draw 
especial attention to the points which have a bear- 
ing on these important aspects of the history of 
universities. 

W. T. Harris. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE PAGE 

I. The Romano-Hellenic Schools and their Decline i 
II, Influence of Christianity on Education, and Rise 

OF Christian Schools i8 

III. Charlemagne and the Ninth Century ... 39 

IV. Inner Work of Christian Schools (a. d. 450-1100) 54 
V. Tenth and Eleventh Centuries .... 75 

VI. Rise of Universities (a. d. iioo) .... 91 
VII. The First Universities — the Schola Salernitana 

and the University of Naples .... 106 

VIII. The University of Bologna 124 

IX. University of Paris 141 

X. The Terms "Studium" and " Universitas," and 

the Constitution of Universities . . .172 
XI. Students, their Numbers and Discipline — Privi- 
leges OF Universities— Faculties . . .195 

XII. Graduation 214 

XIII. Oxford and Cambridge 236 

XIV. The University of Prague 255 

XV. University Studies and the Conditions of Gradu- 
ation 268 



EDITOR'S ANALYSIS. 



Lecture I. Romano-Hellenic Schools and their Decline. — The in- 
fluence of Athens. The meeting of the Roman and Hellenic streams 
of culture in the time of Augustus. The study of oratory and law. 
The Sophists and rhetoricians supplant the philosophers. The organi- 
zation of academic teachers lax under Greek but strict under Roman 
rule. Three principal chairs, sophistics or rhetoric, politics, and phi- 
losophy ; the salaries. The rivalry of Athens and Alexandria. Ephem- 
eral brilliancy of schools of Rhodes, Tarsus, and Halicarnassus. A 
stream of learned professors went out from Athens to instruct in re- 
mote provinces. Alexandria the first to give distinct form and organi- 
zation to a " university." Europe, Asia, and Africa were connected by 
it in their intellectual life. Its library, in the Temple of Serapis, con- 
taining 700,000 volumes, was founded B. c. 298 ; burned, A. D. 640. 
The Alexandrian Museum, with portico, lecture-rooms, and lodgings 
for professors ; commons ; and additional colleges ; eminent professors 
and crowds of students from all parts of the earth, the prototype of the 
university of the middle ages. Medicine, law, mathematics, astrono- 
my, and philosophy were cultivated for 800 years. University instruc- 
tion at Rome, under Vespasian (69-79 A. D.) and Hadrian (i 17-138 
A. D.), in the Basilica of the Temple of Peace, called the Athenaeum ; 
Quintilian occupied a chair, with salary of £700. Schools of rhetoric 
were established in provincial towns. The course of study in the 
university, as found at Athens, at Alexandria, and at Rome, included 
the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and quadrivium (arithmetic, 
geometry, astronomy, and music) ; designations that prevailed from 
300 B. c. Note especially the scope of these branches — that grammar 
2 



Xvi EDITOR'S ANALYSIS. 

included criticism and history, as well as language ; that dialectic in- 
cluded logic, metaphysics, ethics, and natural philosophy. At Rome 
there were ten chairs for grammar, ten for Greek, three for Latin 
rhetoric, three for Greek rhetoric, three for philosophy, four for Roman 
law. Students, fourteen to nineteen years. The professors through- 
out the Roman Empire appointed by the magistrate^ and honored with 
dignities. Preparation required for university studies was two years 
under the grammaticus. The efforts of Constantine, Julian, Gratian, 
and Valentinian, to stimulate education. Libraries at Rome, estab- 
lished by Julius Csesar, Augustus, and others. Law was a specialty at 
the universities of Rome and Berytus ; medicine at Alexandria. Tend- 
ency of studies to degenerate into empty formalities. As late as 400 
A. D. there were Romano-Hellenic schools of rhetoric and grammar in 
Africa ; and in Gaul, at Marseilles, Narbonne, Bordeaux, Aries, Tou- 
louse, Poitiers, Besan9on, Vienne, Autun, Lyons, Rheims (** New 
Athens "), and Treves. At Constantinople, Theodosius (a. d. 379) and 
Valentinian organized a university with a library and thirty-one lect- 
urers, with the lecture-halls at the Capitol, in the seated exedrce (por- 
ticoes). 

Lecture IL Injluenc; of Christianity on Education and Rise of 
Christian Schools. — Under Constantine (321) the empire became Chri.s- 
tian by profession. Christianity began to exercise an influence on 
education about 200 A. D., and at first discouraged university studies. 
By the time of Theodosius (a. d. 408), Roman law was the only serious 
study remaining outside of the religious studies of Christianity. The 
edict of Justinian (a. d. 529) closed the school at Athens. Influence of 
Christianity on human sympathies, the sense of personal responsibility, 
the feeling of humility. The preparation of ministers for the Church. 
The Christian conception of education confined first to abnegation of 
the world and acceptance of dogmas, was opposed to the Greek and 
Roman "humanities," but there were exceptional men — TertuUian 
(a. d. 245), St. Basil (a. d. 379), St. Augustine (a. d. 395), St. Jerome 
(a. D. 420), who recognized heathen studies as necessaiy for mental dis- 
cipline and for religious uses. Romano-Hellenic schools rapidly die 
out after 400 a. d., except a few (Edessa, Nisibis, Berytus, etc.). Cas- 
siodorus endeavored to institute a monastic college in 540. Catecheti- 
cal schools at Alexandria (a. D. 181), and elsewhere prevalent in A. D. 
400, took up the trivium and superseded the "grammaticus." St. 



EDITOR'S ANALYSTS, xvii 

Martin at Liciige and Tours (a. d. 372). Cassian founded the new 
Christian education (a. d. 404) in the monastery of St. Victor at Mar- 
seilles. Contrast between Oriental and Western monasticism — besides 
prayers, there should be labor in agriculture, teaching, and charity. 
Extent of education — arithmetic, reading the psalter, and music. Arts 
and sciences, "vain babblements." St. Benedict (a. d. 528) followed 
with the monastery at Monte Cassino, making Christian education a 
chief object ; novices (from seven to fourteen, copying manuscripts of 
the Bible and religious writers). Irish education cultivated Greek and 
Latin literature (a. d. 600). St. Maur, St. Columban, St. Boniface, 
powerful agents of civilization. Venerable Bede (735), Theodore of 
Tarsus (668-690\ Isidorus of Seville (636, " Origines Etymologicae "), 
Boethius, Isidorus, Martianus Capella, the great text-books, 600-1300. 

Lecture III. Charlejnagne and the Ninth Century. — Charle- 
magne (742-814) revived learning ; learned to write after he ascended 
the throne ; invited Leidrade, of Noricum, and Alcuin of York ; Claud 
Clement and John Melrose at the Palatine School. Promotion prom- 
ised to distinguished scholars without reference to birth. Charle- 
magne's instructions for the reform of schools ; the reasons for reform ; 
the ignorance of the monks and priests and necessity for knowledge of 
grammar in order to understand the images and tropes of the Holy 
Scriptures. Teachers of singing, arithmetic, and grammar imported 
from Rome. Theodulf at Orleans. Elementary instruction. The 
Emperor's collection of Gothic songs ; Theodosian Code. Council of 
Aachen in 817 distinguished between cloister and exterior schools. 
Charlemagne's influence on the founding of universities. Alfred's in- 
fluence on English schools, 900. 

Lecture IV. Inner Work of Christian Schools (450-1100). — Pri- 
mary instruction begun at the age of seven. Alphabet, syllables, 
words, Latin Psalter, without translating. Writing on wax-covered 
tablets ; pen and ink and parchment. Arithmetic, to calculate church 
festivals. Latin grammar begun after the Psalter. Latin used in con- 
versation. Secondary instruction. The trivium and quadrivium taught 
by copying from dictation ; compendiums of them written in form of 
catechisms. Grammars of Donatus and Priscian. In the eleventh 
century yEsop, Virgil, and Prudentius were studied. Greek was studied 
in the fifth and sixth centuries in Irish monasteries. Little attention to 
rhetoric in the schools ; but six points to be observed in writing a let- 



xviii EDITOR'S ANALYSIS. 

ter. Refinements in methods used by Bernard de Chartres ; critical 
study of classic authors. Theodosian Code taught after 800. Higher 
instruction. Dialectic taught from Boethius, Martianus Capella, Iso- 
dorus, and Cassiodorus and Porphyry's introduction. Arithmetic taught 
with Roman numerals. Geometry, four books of Euclid, included 
geography. Course of study at Rheims (a. d. looo) included Logic, 
Virgil, Statius, Terence, Juvenal, Persius, Horace, and Lucan. Analy- 
sis of Martianus Capella ; allegory describing the seven liberal arts. 
Boethius translates Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Top- 
ics, and Sophistica Elenchi. Isidore's Etymologise in twenty books 
treats of seven liberal arts — medicine, church history. Biblical criticism, 
laws, natural science, a Latin lexicon, etc. In the cloister schools the 
pupils were taught gratuitously. Foundations attached to cathedrals 
and monasteries for the instruction of poor pupils in the exterior schools. 
" Scholasticus " at the head of the Cathedral School, a canon. Facul- 
ias or a licentia docendi necessary to a teacher. Personal supervision 
of pupils by monks. Discipline severe ; induction of schoolmaster by 
public flogging. Manuscripts multiplied. Women educated. 

Lecture V. Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. — ^John Scotus Eri- 
gena, in the Palace School under Charles the Bald, starts the scholas- 
tic movement. Guibert de Nogent's pictui-e of education. The year 
1000 to end the world. The order of chivalry ; honor, fidelity, and 
love. Mohammedan schools and libraries at Bagdad, Cordova, Cairo, 
and Alexandria. Avicenna and Averrhoes ; Aristotle and Euclid. 
Medical science came to the Saracens through a Nestorian Greek. 
Arabian schools in Balkh, Ispahan, and Samarcand. 

Lecture VI. Rise of Universities (a. d. iioo). — Scotus Erigena, 
Anselm, and Roscelinus advocated the claims of reason and philosophy 
in religion, and inaugurated the era of universities. The chartering of 
cities developed civil freedom ; cities established schools ; Bologna, 
Milan, Brescia, Florence, in Italy ; Ltibeck, Hamburg, Breslau, Nord- 
hausen, Stettin, Leipsic, and Niirnberg, in Germany. Native language 
taught in city schools. Influence of the universal domination of the 
Catholic Church in making a commonwealth of Europe, through the 
Latin language, the protection for traveling clerics, hospitia in monas- 
teries. Studia publica or generalia arise from the old Episcopal schools 
founded on the old imperial provincial foundations, at Bologna, Paris, 
Rheims, and Naples. The Benedictine schools at St. Galle, Bologna, 



EDITOR'S ANALYSIS, xix 

Paris, Salem um, Bee, Rheims, and Oxford, in the eleventh century, 
were universities after a sort. Anselm, at Bee (1033-1108), had been 
student and prior. The university a natural development of the ca- 
thedral and Benedictine monastery schools, stimulated by the influ- 
ence of the Saracenic schools at Bagdad, Babylon, Alexandria, and 
Cordova. The university life of Greece, with its study of Aristotle, 
Galen, and Hippocrates, passed to the Saracens, and was neglected 
by Christian education until the eleventh century. Specialization, de- 
manded by the growing mass of learning in the leading studies, medi^ 
cine, law, and philosophy, together with the rise of an antimonastic 
feeling in the learned professions, combined with other causes to de- 
velop the schools already existing into universities. The universities 
were special schools opposed to the schools of the seven liberal arts, 
though their course of instruction was founded on the schools of arts ; 
moreover, they were open to all students without regard to religious 
rank. The non-religious character of the universities led to much 
license at first. At Paris the secular power dominated over the eccle- 
siastical. The university differed from the school of arts (a), in giving 
instruction (disciplinae) in law, medicine, and theology ; {b\ in accessi- 
bility as to place ; (f), in being founded by popes and kings and genei^al 
rulers instead of local ones ; {d\ in having special privileges, pecuniary 
and legal ; {e), in being republics of letters (Buloeus — Professor Laurie 
dissents from him in second and third items). Studitwt gensrale de- 
fined as a privileged, higher, and specialized school, open to all the 
world, free from monastic or canonical rule, and self-governing. The 
trade-guilds exercised a powerful influence on the university consti- 
tution. 

Lecture VII. The First Universities. — The name university not 
applied in ancient times, nor in modern times, until two centuries after 
studia generalia arose. The teaching of the Sophists of Greece culmi- 
nated in the rhetorical school of Isocrates, which may be regarded as 
the germ of the university, ancient and modern. But the university of 
the twelfth century quickened by the Saracenic impulse. Men of emi- 
nence began to give instruction at Salerno in medicine, and in law at 
Bologna, and pupils flocked to them to get special instruction. The 
Church gave the new movement its blessing. In iioo Irnerius was 
beginning to lecture at Bologna on civil law, and before iioo at Saler- 
no medicine was taught ; at Paris, theology — a practical end besides a 



XX EDITOR'S ANALYSIS. 

specialized one was attained by the university. The school of Salerno, 
the " fountain of medicine,** located near Monte Cassino of St. Bene- 
dict. The books of Galen and Hippocrates were transcribed at the 
monastery and translated into Latin before 560. The monks famous 
for knowledge of medicine. Constantine of Carthage took refuge at 
Salernum, learned in medicine ; died at the monastery, 2087. Students 
came from Italy, France, and Germany, also Jews and Moors, to hear 
Constantine lecture. The collegium of Salerno founded 1160, the pri- 
orate before iioo. In 1137 the first state examinations in medicine 
and licenses given (licencia medendi). Penalty for practising with- 
out license. The University of Naples founded in 1224 by Frederick 
II., who enacted that the three faculties should be added to the School 
of Arts, and incorporated it as " Universitas Studiorum," under royal 
sanction and protection, with professors, and with salaries ; and prohib- 
ited other schools from competition, and other people from using the 
title professor ; empowered the high chancellor to grant licenses to 
those who received a certificate from the faculty ; freed the professors 
from taxes and military service ; gave the university municipal author- 
ity over students. Physicians were required to promise to give their 
services to the p>oor gratuitously by Hippocrates, 400 B. c. ; the same 
promise exacted by the University of Salerno. 

Lecture VI H. The University of Bologna. — There were schools 
of law at Rome, Constantinople, and Ber}'tus. Justinian endowed the 
one at Rome, 554. The Pandects and Code of Justinian and the Insti- 
tutes were taught through the middle ages, but the Theodosian Code 
was taught north of the Alps. Imerius (Werner) edited the Pandects, 
and became Professor of Civil Law (1070-1138) ; lectured to flocks of 
students. The old Roman School of Arts at Bologna had never died 
out. Imerius taught the trivium and quadrivium before he taught law. 
Frederick I., 1158, recognized the univeisitas of Bologna as one already 
existing. In 1200 there were 10,000 students at Bologna and 20,000 
later on. The universitas citra montanorum (1210) had seventeen na- 
tions; the ultra montanorum had eighteen. Each elected its own rector, 
and each nation its procurator. The Pope recognized universities and 
confirmed their privileges, but did not found them. Canon law added 
to the course at Bologna about 1150, and schools of arts and medicine, 
1316 ; theology in 1360. 

Lecture IX. University of Paris. — ^The Art-School of Notre 



EDITOR'S ANALYSIS. Xxi 

Dame preceded the University of Paris. In the eleventh century a 
learned monk, William of Champeaux, taught theology at Paris, and 
was succeeded by Abelard, a pupil of Roscelin, nominalist, in 1113. 
The School of Arts had flourished since Charlemagne's time, but it be- 
came a studium generale in the time of William of Champeaux and 
Abelard, about 1140, having privileges conferred upon it by Louis VII. 
and Pope Alexander III. Peter the Lombard lectured there in 1145- 
I159. "Quartier Latin" inhabited by masters and scholars. In 1348 
there were 514 regents in arts, besides other faculties. Students young ; 
twelve years of age. Law and medicine not taught at Paris at first. 
Kings and popes protect the university against the civil authorities, 
even when it is the aggressor. Four nations at Paris. Self-govern- 
ment in the universities. 

Lecture X. The Constitution of Universities. — A studium gene- 
rale or publicum, an art-school, and open to both seculars and ecclesias- 
tics. Studium generale gave place to the universitas. The term uni- 
versitas used by the popes in addressing teachers and scholars and 
meaning simply the whole community, it was applied to the whole 
Church of Britain ; applied also to towns or organized communia. It 
meant incorporated commtmity. Cities and towns and trades-unions in 
the eleventh century were organizing and seeking charters to protect 
themselves from the feudal and episcopal influences. So the new uni- 
versities, too, sought incorporation. The jurors of the guilds examined 
apprentices and initiated masters. Copying the free-trade guilds, the 
students elect procurators, or consilarii, and the latter elect a rector. 
They kept monks out of the rectorship. Even in the pre-Christian 
schools of Athens there was a classification of students into nations. 
The universities with their specialized schools initiated that scientific 
spirit which led to freedom. The Masters of Arts in Paris held exclu- 
sively the power, and the students did not share in it. Scottish uni- 
versities have mediaeval organization : (i) students ; (2) graduates ; (3) 
professors ; (4) rector ; (5) chancellor — the senatus academicus is the ' 
governing body, composed of the principal and professors of the four 
faculties. 

Lecture XI. Students, their Numbers and Discipline ; Privileges 
of Universities ; Faculties. — Twenty thousand students at Bologna, 
thirty thousand at Paris or Oxford — the numbers exaggerated. The 
attendants, servants, college cooks, etc., were members of the universi- 



Xxii EDITOR'S ANALYSIS. 

tas, because in the same municipal corporation ; the students included 
also boys twelve to fifteen years of age. Monasteries of Benedictine and 
Augustinian orders were required to send one student to the univer- 
sity for each twenty of their residents. The students were disciplined 
by the masters and rector. Vespasian the first who paid salaries of 
professors out of the public treasuiy. The clergy exempt from public 
service and from taxes. In the middle ages every class of men, every 
district, every city, tried to isolate itself within a jurisprudence of its 
own. " Clericus " applied to priests and also to all educated people. 
" Faculty " signified a special department of knowledge, and then it 
came to mean a specific body teaching a range of subjects in the uni- 
versity. The rise of the faculties connected with the graduation sys- 
tem. Theological faculty at Paris, 1259 ; medical, 1265 ; law, 1271 ; 
each faculty elected its dean. The Faculty of Arts hold precedence. 
In the fourteenth century, 15 universities founded ; in the fifteenth, 29. 
Lecture XII. Graduation. — The right to teach (doctor) or to 
practise medicine (licencia medendi) were the first degrees. The 
Valentinian edict of 329 prohibited orators and professors, who were 
not approved by the best judges, from travelling as teachers. The 
Theodosian Code calls the higher teachers "professors." or"magis- 
tri " or " doctores." In the thirteenth century the chancellor or scholas- 
ticus of a cathedral granted a licencia or facultas docendi. The guilds 
composed of apprentices, assistants or companions and masters. The 
degree of " Baccalaureus Artium " had been granted in Paris, for three 
or four years' study of the trivium (bacca, for vacca, a cow, hence cow- 
boy or herdsman, serving under a colonus or farmer). A. B. reached at 
seventeen or eighteen, and had a prospective signification. " Bacha- 
larius " adopted by Bologna 1297, after one year's study of law. 
*' Doctor" and "magister" equivalent degrees established at the end of 
the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century ; in theology, earlier. 
In Germany no " masters," but all " doctors." The authority that con- 
ferred the degree was the masters or the chancellor. Degrees in sin- 
gle subjects given at Oxford and Cambridge. Bachelor never known as 
an arts degree in Italy. Baccalarius marked the completion of the 
work of the secondary or trivial schools. The next step was the in- 
troduction of the degrees of " bachelor," " master," and " doctor," into 
the three faculties. The bachelor course (in France and England) a 
trivium course. In Paris magistri regentes and non-regentes (teach- 



EDITOR'S ANALYSIS. XXiii 

ing or not). British universities recognize the double function of 
teaching schools and also academic institutes. If the professor does 
not investigate himself, he will look coldly on young aspirants in the 
field of investigation. Not culture but the promotion of science is the 
end of the university. " A man who thinks himself supreme or pre- 
cious, and who spends his life in turning pretty phrases, when not 
engaged in admiration of his own exclusive intellectual possessions," is 
" cultured." " The culture of the few and the disciplining of the many 
is not the object of a university, but the equipment of the ai-ts and 
sciences, and the sustenance of those who pursue them from the pure 
love of knowledge and in the interests of mankind." 

Lecture XIII. Oxford and Cambridge. — Schools in a priory at 
Oxford in 800 ; and also at Ely. The origin of Cambridge and Ox- 
ford. Oxford passed from a Benedictine arts-school to a university 
about 1149, when Vacarius lectured on civil law. Henry III. sum- 
mons Parliament to meet at Oxford, 1258. University college, 1232. 
Robert Grosstete. Migration from Paris to Oxford, 1228. Paris the 
great centre in the thirteenth century ; its anarchy. Secession from 
Oxford of three thousand masters and students in 1209 to Reading and 
Cambridge. In 1400 thirty-two schools or hostels at Oxford. A chan- 
cellor instead of a rector at Cambridge, and possessing powers inde- 
pendent of the regents. Two procurators or proctors, called also rec- 
tors, at Cambridge. Oxford the ecclesiastical ; Cambridge the mathe- 
matical and practical. Halls and colleges, hostels or hospitia, for stu- 
dents' hotels or boarding in commons. In 1263 hospitia at Bologna ; in 
1200 at Paris. " Colleges " were for religious orders. The Sorbonne 
founded in 1250 for fellows of theology. College of Navarre in 1304. 
Thirty colleges founded in the thirteenth century in Paris, increased 
to seventy or eighty in all. In 1452 masters and medical faculty in 
Paris permitted to marry. Students' clubs at Cambridge in " Inns," 
"Entries," " Halls." The monastic institutions at Paris, Oxford, and 
Cambridge were colleges in effect — a college being primarily a corpora- 
tion of individuals having a common purpose (a body of persons and 
not a mere building) ; next it was used to signify an endowed hall. 
Eighty halls at Oxford, the highest number, but decreased as the col- 
leges increased. Colleges introduced to supplant the monasteries. 
Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England, 1264, founds Merton Col- 
lege, which furnished the model for succeeding colleges at Oxford and 



xxiv EDITOR'S ANALYSIS, 

Cambridge ; plan of Merton copied from the Sorbonne ; for the secu- 
lar students, " for scholars devoted to the pursuits of literature, ... to 
the study of arts or philosophy, theology, or canon law." From Mer- 
ton went Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Thomas Bradwardine. 
" Fellows " defined. 

Lecture XIV. The University of Prague. — The starting-point of 
the great German system of universities. Founded in 1348 by Charles 
IV. Copied Paris, where he had been a student. The Pope issued a 
bull, giving validity to its degrees, and appointed Archbishop of Prague 
the chancellor. Four faculties and four nations. The rector could not 
belong to a religious order. The rector held civil and criminal court 
twice a week. University council of eight members, two from each na- 
tion, elected semi-annually. Prague became (like Paris) a " universitas 
magistrorum " (the students having no part in the government). Deans 
chosen by the faculties. Degrees of bachelor, master (in theology and 
arts), doctor (law and medicine). Bachelor to give lessons for two 
years in the university, accept no degree from another university ; de- 
gree conferred by the faculty and not by the chancellor. Master's de- 
gree conferred by the chancellor. Law faculty separate. Students to 
attend at least three lectures per week. Writing from dictation. A doc- 
tor regens called "professor." Disputations on Tuesdays and Thurs- 
days ; bachelors always present. Grand disputation in January — all 
regent masters take part. Course in the arts completed before enter- 
ing the higher faculties. Order of precedence : theology, law, medi- 
cine, the arts. Deans not a part of the governing body of the univer- 
sity. Secession fiom Prague in 1409 of Germans to Vienna, Erfurt, 
Heidelberg, and Leipsic. iioo to 1300, 10 universities founded; four- 
teenth century, 18; fifteenth century, 29, including 3 Scotch. 

Lecture XV. University Studies and the Conditions of Gradua^ 
tion. — Trivium still used for bachelor's degree in universities, being 
handed down to them from the monastic and cathedral schools of early 
times. Not much could be done in grammar, rhetoric, and dialec- 
tic by boys of seventeen or eighteen or even younger. Excellence 
of Bernard of Chartres's teaching. (See also page 60.) Grammars of 
Donatus and Priscian learned by heart at monastic and cathedral 
schools ; dictated and explained first. Priscian versified by Villedieu, 
1200; remained text-book till 1550. Dialectic and rhetoric taught 
from Epitomes. Cicero, Virgil, etc., read as illustrations of grammar. 



EDITOR'S ANALYSIS, XXV 

The trivium very arid and formal, but the true intellectual life was 
found in three faculties — law, theology, and medicine — which cultivated 
acuteness of mind, loosened old convictions, and laid the foundations 
of modern rationalism. Daily programme : regent met pupils at sun- 
rise, noon, and toward evening. One of these daily sessions devoted 
to definition (" determination ") and disputation. No books owned by 
pupils, hence much memory -work. Robert Cour9on (1200) on the re- 
quirements for mastership : Aristotle's dialectic, ethics, and fourth book 
of Topics ; Priscian's grammar ; treatises on philosophy, rhetoric, 
mathematics, and grammar (Metaphysics and Physics of Aristotle not 
allowed at first). Petrus Hispanus's logic. Text-book in theology, 
Peter the Lombard's Sentences, which were compiled from previous 
collections of sentences that had come down through various hands ; 
after 11 50 it became the universal text-book of philosophy as well as 
theology, the pupils copying it from dictation and discussing it, the 
master commenting on it. In 1257 the religious orders of Paris se- 
cured the adoption of their cloister schools into the university. The 
" Decretum," a digest of canon law in 1157. About the same time the 
Pandects became the text-book. Even idle discussions were a vast im- 
provement on the mere memoriter learning that had preceded. After 
Aquinas and Duns Scotus, theology became metaphysics, and the ef- 
fort was to reconcile authority and reason. After the elements of 
grammar, logic, and rhetoric, the pupil defined terms and propositions 
and defended them before examiners, and was given the bachelor's de- 
gree ; changed his square cap for a round one, and began to teach 
freshmen. After the age of twenty-one and "six years' study in arts, 
the master's degree given on examination. Course in theology five 
years to fit for giving private lectures ; eight years' preparation for 
public lectures (1294). Euclid only to Proposition 5, Book I. (Roger 
Bacon's authority), and for three hundred years after only six books 
were learned. Repetition at Bologna : the discussion of all possible 
difficulties and objections suggested by some point in the text. One 
year of work at repetitio made a bachalarius ; eight years in all re- 
quired for a mastership. Wrote criticisms on two texts, etc. Hat, 
ring, and book the insignia presented to the new doctor. Few gram- 
mar-schools in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, hence 
boys of eleven and twelve years went directly to Oxford and Cambridge, 
as at Paris. This destroyed the cathedral schools and monastery 



xxvi EDITOR'S ANALYSIS. 

schools. At fourteen a boy was fitted for college, and came under a 
master for four years to fit for " determinations " or B. A. degree. 
" Responsions " was the half-way examination in grammar and arith- 
metic. He was called " sophista generalis "before "Responsions," 
and " questionist " after until the second examination, which was in 
logic and rhetoric. A " bachelor " in England studied three years 
geometry, astronomy, and philosophy (physics, ethics, and metaphysics). 
A master read portions of these for discussion. The humanism at the end 
of the thirteenth centuiy reappeared in full force at the end of the fif- 
teenth century, aided by printing. Disputation favored free thought, 
because one side had to be opposed to the orthodox view. *' North 
American Review " on colleges : " They fit persons for professions, 
teachers, authors, legislators for the people." Universities responsible 
to the people, because endowed with privileges received from them. 
Should be dedicated to advancement of ai-ts and sciences at large. 
" Oxford and Cambridge mere schools where gymnasium work is pro- 
longed," according to Dollinger. " If any man thinks philosophy and 
universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions 
are from thence served and supplied " (Bacon), 



PREFACE. 



This book is not addressed to historical experts, but 
to schoolmasters and others who wish to know some- 
thing about mediaeval education and the rise of 
universities. The Lectures are, in fact, part of my 
historical course which I cannot find time or occasion 
to deliver, as I think it better to confine my public 
instructions to those historical aspects of education 
which convey practical lessons suited to the school- 
room. 

While I do not profess to instruct historical 
experts, I am yet quite prepared to defend the views 
which I venture to put forth, as at least the honest 
result of considerable reading and much labour of 
collation. To some I may seem, when dealing with 
university origins, to lean too much towards the " lay " 
views of Meiners ; to others I may seem to incline to 
the " ecclesiastical " views of those who are represented 



XXVlll PREFACE. 

by the inadequate and ill-constructed book of Huber. 
I can only say that the theory which I expound is 
based on a careful induction. Perhaps I ought to 
have no theory at all ; but it seems to me that 
history, as distinguished from chronicles or annals, 
must always contain a theory, whether confessed by 
the writer or not. It may not be put prominently 
forward, but it lurks in the pages and may be read 
between the lines. A sound theory is simply a 
general conception which co-ordinates and gives unity 
and a causal relation to a multitude of facts. With- 
out this, facts cease to have interest except for the 
antiquarian. 

The manuscript has been so long before me, and 
so frequently altered as my knowledge of the subject 
extended, that it is difficult for me now to give all my 
" sources." But I may mention that for the general 
history of the period I have read the usual authorities 
— Gibbon, Milman, Merivale, Guizot, Hallam, Sis- 
mondi, Sharon Turner, Freeman, Green, and Skene. 
All important references I have myself verified. 
When I draw from accessible works, such as the 
Theodosian Code, it is from my own analysis of the 
" Titles " which bear on education, and not at second 
hand ; when I refer to Martianus Capella, Boethius, 



PREFACE, X>^1X 

or Isidore, I do so as personally cognizant of at 
least the scope of their works, and have them open 
before me. 

In dealing with the three primary universities, I 
have based what I say on a careful and independent 
study of Ackermann for Salernum, of Crevier for 
Paris, of Savigny for Bologna, of Tomek for Prague, 
of Mullinger and Anstey's "Mon. Acad." for Cam- 
bridge and Oxford ; I have also read the general 
accounts of Meiners, Huber, etc. Bulaeus and Wood 
have been at hand for reference. Lacroix's " Middle 
Ages," Brentano's "Guilds," and Villivry's " Histoire 
de rinstruction publique" I have found of value, if used 
with discretion. Newman, Montalembert, Mabillon 
("De Studiis Monasticis"), Cramer, and Warton have 
been called into requisition ; as also Capes' " Uni- 
versity Life in Athens," and Kirkpatrick's "The 
University. ' For monastic studies I have been much 
indebted to Dr. Specht's "Geschichte des Unter- 
richtswesen in Deutschland," which deals with the 
Middle Ages only. 

The excellent treatise on the " Schools of Charles 
the Great," by Mr. Mullinger, came into my hands 
(after repeated attempts to procure it) only when I had 
begun to print, but I read it carefully and found that 



XXX PREFACE, 

my own view concurred substantially with his. I was 

glad to import from his pages into my own a few 

quotations and references, and thus take advantage of 

a learning to which I could not pretend. In addition 

to the authorities already cited, I went through " Itterus 

de Gradibus sive Honoribus Academicis " — a prolix, 

clumsy, and confused, but useful, treatise. The books 

to which I have merely referred on specific points, 

such as the writings of John of Salisbury, are very 

numerous. 

S. S. L. 

University of Edinburgh, 
September, 1886. 

Note. — I ought almost to apologize to the reader 
for having failed to study a recent work — "Die 
Entstehung der Universitaten des Mittelalters bis 
1400," by P. H. Denifle. It came into my hands 
only the other day, when correcting my second proofs. 
I suspended printing till I had read cursorily the most 
of it I was pleased to find that the author's general 
views were already to a considerable extent antici- 
pated by me. The work is the most learned that 
has yet appeared on the subject of universities ; it is 
also, unfortunately, the most polemical. The only 
change of moment which he has led me to make is in 



PREFACE. XXXI 

the place to be assigned to the Rector and nations at 
Paris. His arguments on this question seem to me 
to be irresistible. I have also checked many of my 
statements by his. Any more detailed use of the 
volume must be reserved for a second edition of these 
Lectures, when Denifle probably will have completed 
his laborious task. 




MEDIEVAL EDUCATION 
AND UNIVERSITIES. 



LECTURE I. 

THE ROMANO-HELLENIC SCHOOLS AND THEIR 
DECLINE. 

" Looking at Athens," says Newman,* " as the 
preacher and missionary of letters, and as enlisting 
the whole Greek race in her work, who is not 
struck with admiration at the range and multiplicity 
of her operations? At first the Ionian and yEolian 
cities were the principal scene of her activity, but 
if we look on a century or two, we shall find that 
she forms the intellect of the colonics of Sicily and 
Magna Graecia ; has penetrated Italy, and is shedding 
the light of philosophy and awakening thought in 
the cities of Gaul by means of Marseilles, and along 
the coast of Africa by means of Gyrene. She has 
sailed up both sides of the Euxine and deposited 

• ** Historical Sketches," vol. iii. 



2 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

her literary wares where she stopped, as traders 
nowadays leave samples of foreign merchandise, or 
as war-steamers land muskets and ammunition, or 
as agents for religious societies drop their tracts or 
scatter their versions. The whole of Asia Minor and 
Syria resounds with her teaching; the barbarians of 
Parthia are quoting fragments of her tragedians ; 
Greek manners are introduced and perpetuated on 
the Hydaspes and Acesines ; Greek coins, lately come 
to light, are struck in the capital of Bactriana ; and 
so charged is the moral atmosphere of the East with 
Greek civilization, that down to this day those tribes 
are said to show to most advantage which can claim 
relation of place or kin with Greek colonies established 
there above two thousand years ago." 

In the time of Augustus, the Roman and Hel- 
lenic educational streams had met. The education we 
have thenceforth to speak of is, in truth, the education 
neither of Greece nor Rome, but of the civilized 
portion of the Roman empire. In the Western 
empire at least, if not elsewhere, we discern the con- 
tinuity of the specifically Roman influence. Oratory, 
as defined by Quintilian in its practical political 
relations, and law as an imperial system, steadied, so 
to speak, the more general Hellenic aim. In the 
East there was more vivacity but less solidity. For a 
couple of hundred years after the death of Isocrates, 
Peripatetic and Academic, Stoic and Epicurean, 
taught crowds of ardent youth, each professor having 



ROMANO-HELLENIC SCHOOLS. 3 

a fervent belief in his own philosophy. But in the 
midst of these philosophic teachers, the sophist, as 
mere rhetorician, was steadily gaining ascendency, 
and even so early as the first century of our era, philo- 
sophical studies were pursued rather as a discipline 
of mind than as a theory of knowledge and life. 

It cannot be said that this decline, which began 
before the birth of Christ, and which steadily con- 
tinued, spite of the appearance from time to time 
of a few brilliant and earnest teachers, was due either 
to the indifference of the State to the higher edu- 
cation, or to the want of professional ambition among 
the youth of both East and West. 

In Athens, which was to the ancient world much 
more than Paris was to Europe in the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries, the organization of the Academic 
teachers had been long of a lax kind, and in so far 
as it was organization at all, it was of a voluntary 
character. It, in fact, bore a striking resemblance to 
the state of Paris and Bologna in the twelfth century. 
But from the time of Augustus, if not before, endow- 
ments partly public,* partly private, were given. 
With endowments there naturally came a more 
definite organization. There were three principal 
chairs t — sophistics or rhetoric, politics, and philosophy. 
The first-named was recognized as the chief chair or 

• It is probable that public or state endowments did not exist till 
the time of Marcus Aurelius (a.d. i6i-i8o). 
t Grafenhahn (iii. p. 29) says ten. 



4 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

throne of the school, and had attached to it a salary 
of ;^500 a year for life. But the chief source of 
emolument was at all times the fees of pupils. 
Among these were to be found (as in the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries at Bologna and Paris) matured 
men of the world, whose fees constantly took the form 
of handsome honoraria. The rival teachers who cir- 
culated round the " school " were numerous, and not 
only competed, but touted, for pupils. The auditors 
of particular teachers formed parties, and fought with 
each other. So high did the spirit of competition 
run, that the arrival of a ship in the Piraeus was 
the signal for a rush not altogether unlike that with 
which all continental travellers are familiar. But in 
these days it is a rush of needy porters or hotel- 
agents ; in those, it was a scramble of students, each 
a self-appointed touter for his own particular sophist. 
Spite of many home-grown evils, however, and 
of the formidable rivalry of Alexandria, Athens 
continued to hold its own till the second century, 
not only as the favoured resort of students, but also 
as the true head-quarters of such speculation as sur- 
vived. " The splendour," says Merivale (c. 66)^ " of an 
individual reputation might suffice to found an academy 
at other places of educational resort ; the disciples of 
a popular rhetorician or philosopher might maintain 
for two or more generations the school of which he 
had laid the foundations ; but the ephemeral brilliancy 
of Rhodes, Tarsus, or Halicarnassus was lost in the 



ROMANO-HELLENIC SCHOOLS, 5 

constant and steady light which had beamed for five 
centuries from the halls of Plato and Aristotle. While 
hundreds of erudite professors of every art and of 
all learning wandered from the centre of ancient 
discipline to instruct in their own homes the patrician 
youth of Italy and the Provinces, mankind still 
recognized in undiminished force the necessity of 
a course of study at Athens itself, to equip the 
complete scholar and gentleman, the most accom- 
plished product of intellectual training;" — a remark- 
able instance of the perpetuity of the power of the 
genius loci. 

Numerous as were the centres of Hellenic learning 
spread over the civilized world two centuries before 
Christ, there is none which commands our attention, 
next to Athens itself, so much as Alexandria. This 
partly because it first gave distinct form and organiza- 
tion to a " university," as we in modern times under- 
stand that word. The great Alexander, in founding 
Alexandria, connected Europe, Asia, and Africa not 
merely by mercantile bonds, but in their intellectual 
and literary life. Here arose under the Ptolemies a 
complete system of higher instruction, and libraries 
such as the world had not before seen. The books 
were lodged in the temple of Serapis, and accumu- 
lated to the number of seven hundred thousand. 
They formed the record of all human thought, until 
they fell a prey to internal civic and religious dis- 
sensions. The Serapeum dates from B.C. 298, and, 



6 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

after recovering from the fire of B.C. 48, it finally- 
disappeared about A.D. 640.* 

In connection with this library, Ptolemy founded 
a college, or rather what might be called a Studium 
Generale, and endowed its professors. This College 
was erected in the suburb already occupied by the 
Serapeum, the royal palace, the amphitheatre, and 
gymnasia. " A noble portico stretched along its front 
for exercise or conversation, and opened on the public 
rooms devoted to disputation and lectures. A certain 
number of professors were lodged within the precincts, 
and a handsome hall or refectory was provided for the 
common meal " (Newman). This building was called 
the Museum. As time went on, new colleges were 
added to the original building. The most eminent 
men were invited to fill the chairs, and round them 
congregated large numbers of youths from every 
quarter of the civilized world, to study the arts and 
sciences which were there represented in their whole 
range. In the Museum, as also at Athens, were 
trained the Fathers of the Church. 

So enduring was the character of this great insti- 
tution, that, more than six hundred years after its 
foundation, Ammianus (a.d. 362) speaks of it as 
" having been long the abode of distinguished men," 
and still possessing scholars of repute. Medicine, law, 
mathematics, and astronomy were cultivated. It was 
sufficient recommendation to any young medicus in 
• There is no evidence that the Arabs burned it. 



ROMANO-HELLENIC SCHOOLS. 7 

any part of the Roman empire to have been educated 
at Alexandria (Amm. Mar., xxii. 16). 

As might be expected in a university so carefully 
organized and endowed, the teaching was of a far 
more definite and practical character than at Athens. 
And this practical character, arising largely out of the 
pursuit of medicine, mathematics, and grammar, gave 
Alexandria pre-eminence and power after the leader- 
ship had passed away from the mother city in Attica- 
, For there can be no doubt that whatever might still 
be the attractions and reputation of Athens, all 
earnest philosophical thought was in the first century 
and thereafter to be found in Alexandria — the 
university of progress, where neo-Platonism began 
to rise into importance under the influence of Judaic 
and Christian ideas. This mystic movement in 
philosophy culminated in Plotinus, who died about 
A.D. 205. Nor less in mathematics and physics did 
Alexandria lead the way. 

Passing minor schools, and among them the famous 
school of law at Berytus, in Phoenicia, we turn to the 
capital of the empire. There, at the time of which 
we are speaking, Quintilian was still teaching, and ere 
long, having retired from active duty, published his 
*' Oratorical Institutions," in which we see the best and 
soundest elements of the Hellenic teaching penetrated 
and braced by the Roman spirit. During his lifetime 
(he died A.D. 118) he saw the beginnings of the 
Roman "university." Grafenhahn says he was him- 



8 MEDJMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

self a professor in it with a salary of ;^700 a year.* 
A common point of rendezvous for the Athenian 
sophists was naturally the metropolis of the empire, 
although they were also to be found in all leading 
provincial towns where they opened private schools. 
At Rome some attempt was made to regulate their 
activity and to control their restlessness under the 
Flavian dispensation. Vespasian completed the design 
of his new Temple of Peace by erecting a basilica, 
in which the learned might carry on their teaching 
and their disputations (A.D. 69-79). This institution 
was called the Athenaeum, if not precisely at this 
time, at least under Hadrian (a.d. i 17-138), who ex- 
tended it. Both the institution and the name were 
evidently suggested by the Museum of Alexandria. 
Fixed salaries and senatorial rank were attached to 
certain chairs from the time of Vespasian.f This 
promotion of the higher education was no passing 
caprice on the part of the imperial authority, but 
the result of a deliberate policy. Both Vespasian 
and Hadrian were, in truth, working on lines 
already laid down by Augustus, but they took a 
more extended view of the necessities of the empire 
by planting endowed schools of rhetoric and grammar 
in provincial towns as well as in Rome. One of the 
objects they had in view, says Merivale, was to "restore 

• "Gesch. der Class. Phil.," iv. 32. 

t Sueton., Vit. Vesp., 18, "Primus (V.) e fisco Latinis Gracisque 
rhetoribus annua centera constituit," etc. 



ROMANO-HELLENIC SCHOOLS. 9 

the tone of society, to infuse into the national mind 
healthier sentiments ; " but I suspect the chief object 
was to control the academic class, just as the civil 
power afterwards aimed at controlling the Church. 
By means of endowments and organization, men who 
might otherwise have employed themselves in mis- 
leading youth and disturbing the social order, were 
brought into the service of the imperial idea. 

The endowments of the rhetorical school at the 
basilica were renewed and increased by successive 
lemperors, and the students who flocked from the pro- 
vinces to Rome were put under State surveillance 
of a stringent kind.* At this metropolitan university, 
the trivium and quadrivium formed, as at Alexandria 
and Athens, the staple of the instruction, but these 
rather in the form of ascertained knowledge than 
of the higher speculation. The students were young, 
entering about the age of fourteen, and leaving at 
nineteen, unless when they remained to pursue their 
studies in the specialty of law,t for which Rome was 
the chief centre, although in later imperial tim.es, 
especially after the division of the empire, it found 
formidable rivals in Berytus and Constantinople. 
There were ten chairs for Latin grammar, ten for 
Greek; three for Latin rhetoric, three for Greek; 
one, if not three, for philosophy ; two, if not four, for 

* See Lecture XL, seq. 

t So some say ; but all had to leave in their twentieth year, as I read 
the Theodosian Code. 



lo MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

Roman law. Professorships of medicine were added 
at a later period. Grammar included language, 
metre, criticism, and history. The students who 
entered were presumed to have already gone through 
a two years' course in schools of the Grammaticus. 
They were subjected, as I have said, to the discipline 
of the civil authorities. 

Nor was the organization of the higher instruction 
confined to what we should call university schools in 
important centres. For, "in all the cities of the Roman 
world," says Gibbon (chap, xxiii.), " the education of 
youth was entrusted to masters of grammar and 
rhetoric, who were elected by the magistrates, main- 
tained at the public expense, and distinguished by 
many lucrative and honourable privileges." To this 
Juvenal refers (xv. no) in the following lines: — 

** Nunc totus Graias, nostrasque habet orbis Athenas, 
Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Britannos, 
De conducendo loquitur jam rhetore Thule." 

In A.D. 334 Constantine, in continuation of the work 
of his predecessors, endeavoured, by a decree (Theod. 
Cod., xiii. iv. i), further to stimulate education in 
the arts. Though Julian subsequently banished 
Christian teachers from the schools, no one doubts 
his interest in education. Valentinian, again, who died 
A.D. 375, confirmed the work of previous emperors ; 
and, a year after his death, a decree of Gratian 
confirmed the work of Valentinian. Teachers — the 
Grammaticus, the Rhetor, and the Sophist ^^ were 



ROMANO-HELLENIC SCHOOLS. u 

held in high respect, and they enjoyed many of the 
immunities and privileges afterwards conferred on the 
clergy.* 

Nor were libraries wanting : the first public library 
in Rome was planned by Julius Caesar, who appointed 
Varro to carry out his ideas (Sueton., "Jul. €.,"44). 
Cesar's death caused operations to be suspended. 
Asinius Pollio succeeded in instituting one in a hall 
of the Temple of Freedom. f Augustus instituted 
two public libraries about thirty years before Christ, 
and others were afterwards added. Hadrian established 
a library in Athens. 

Looking, then, at these ample public provisions, 
we cannot say that the decline of education was due 
to external causes. It was a decay from within. And 
here, for the better understanding of the subject, it 
is fitting to sketch the character and aims of the 
Romano- Hellenic schools. 

From the time of Isocrates, and under the in- 
fluence of Speusippus and Aristotle, the range 
of human knowledge and, consequently, the sphere 
of the higher intellectual activity was summed up 
under seven heads : grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic 
— these afterwards known as the trivium ; and music, 
arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy — known as the 
quadrivium. These names were first used, apparently, 

* Bursaries for promising freeborn youths were first instituted by 
Alexander Severus about a.d. 230 (Lamprid., *' Vit. A. S.," 3). 
t Vid. for authorities Bahr, " Gesch. d. Rom. Lit.," i. 48. 



12 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

about the end of the fourth century. The terms, 
however, were themselves elastic, and their definitions 
varied from time to time ; for example, grammar 
often meant abstract grammar alone, generally it 
embraced literature and criticism. Dialectic seems to 
me to have belonged to the higher or university in- 
struction alone in the Romano-Hellenic schools, and 
included logic, metaphysics, and ethics : with Quin- 
tilian it included only logic and ethics. The seven 
liberal arts were studied solely in the interest of 
general culture and with no professional aims, with 
the exception of rhetoric and law, which contemplated 
the preparation of youth for public life and the bar. 
In Alexandria the professional training of the phy- 
sician was a specialty, as at Berytus and Rome the 
professional education of the lawyer. These special 
aims, however, were, for long, wholly subordinated to 
"arts" in the widest sense. It is important to keep 
this in view, if we would understand the higher 
schools of the Greeks and Romans, and the subsequent 
character of mediaeval education. It is not to be 
supposed, however, that all the youth who frequented 
the pre-Christian universities took the whole curri- 
culum of study. Rhetoric and oratory chiefly 
occupied their attention, and, next to these, philoso- 
phical discussions. 

In the opinion of Quintilian, all merely formal 
studies, such as logic and rhetoric, were to be under- 
taken with a view to the solid substance of literature, 



ROMANO-HELLENJC SCHOOLS, 13 

philosophy, science, and art. The realities of life, not 
the form of words or trick of phrase or felicity of 
construction, were to be the preparation for the good 
orator. But, by the middle of the second century, 
philosophy was an intellectual game, personal morality 
a matter of convention and prudence, and rhetoric 
an artifice. The departure of moral earnestness in 
the pursuit of abstract truth was at the same time 
the signal for the departure of all sound education 
in other subjects. Words took the place of things, 
forms of realities. Men who are consciously bound 
by cultured forms of expression have generally very 
little to say. It was, no doubt, the deep conviction of 
the futility of rhetorical and sophistical studies that 
led Plutarch, in the third century, so earnestly to urge 
practical morality, and Apollonius of Tyana and Dion, 
in the middle and close of the first century, to preach 
a moral and spiritual life. These men were, in truth, 
colleagues of the Christian preacher and missionary, 
calling men to a new faith. 

It was not long after the death of Plotinus that 
the Christian Church began to exercise a distinct 
influence on the education of youth. It would be 
an historical misconception to regard this influence 
as hurtful, and content ourselves with this perfunctory 
judgment. To the Hellenic idea as denoted by the 
Roman word "humanitas," the Christian ibea was 
certainly hostile ; but it is to the general influences 



14 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

which led to the disruption of the empire that we 
must trace the inner decline of both the lower and 
higher schools. True, the introduction of a new 
conception of the ends of human life struck a blow 
destined to be fatal, sooner or later, to the Hellenic 
education ; but already the schools themselves had 
become so degenerate, if not corrupt, that they could 
not have long survived without a philosophical revival 
amounting to a revolution. Some great new spiritual 
force was needed to reform society and the education 
of the young. That force was at hand in Christianity; 
and if it very early assumed a negative, if not a pro- 
hibitory, attitude to the old learning, it may be 
conceded that this was an inevitable step in the 
development of a new ethical ideal. 

The Romano-Hellenic schools were, however, 
tenacious of life. Even in the end of the fourth 
century we find them still diffused over the provinces. 
In Africa they flourished, and in Gaul there were many 
well-known centres in which both the Grammaticus 
and the Rhetor,* and in some cases the jurist and 
the philosopher, taught — such as Marseilles, Narbonne, 
Bordeaux, Aries, Toulouse, Poitiers, Besangon, Vienne, 
Autun,t Lyons (founded by Caligula, A.D. 37-41), 

* The edict of*Gratian, in A.D. 376, enables us to fix the relative im- 
portance of the Grammaticus and Rhetor : the former was to be paid 
only one-half the salary of the latter. 

t In Viriville's "Hist, de I'Instruction publique" we learn that at 
Autun, in a.d. 276, the walls of the porticoes of the schools were painted 
over with maps and dates and historical facts. 



ROMANO-HELLENIC SCHOOLS. 15 

Rheims (at one time called the New Athens), and, 
most famous of all, Treves, where there was also an 
excellent library. The interests of the professors at 
these centres formed a constant subject of care to 
the emperors,* who from time to time confirmed 
and extended their privileges. 

If now we turn to the East, we find that intel- 
lectual activity was not so soon arrested as in the 
West. At the head -quarters of the empire, Constan- 
tinople, and in Athens the traditions of ancient 
learning still survived. Theodosius (a.d. 379) and 
Valentinian developed more fully the scheme of Con- 
stantine, and organized the teaching at the Eastern 
capital by appointing three Oratores and ten Gram- 
matici in Latin; in Greek, five Sophistae and ten 
Grammatici, one teacher of philosophy (" qui philoso- 
phiae arcana rimetur "), and two of civil law.f Seven 
librarians, for arranging, preserving, and repairing 
manuscripts, were also added to the staff. The 
Auditorium was in the Capitol. J There were recesses, 
called exedrcB^ off the porticoes, provided with seats. 
In these the professors taught. Even down to the 
eighth century, classical authors were studied in 
the Christian school of the Octagon, along with the 
Fathers of the Church, and after a period of decay, 
the university was refounded by Michael II. (A.D. 

* Guizot, " Hist, of Civilization in France," iv. 
t Vide Theod. Cod., xiv. ix. 3. 
X Ibid., XV. i. 53. 
4 



i6 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

842- Z6j)^ and in it we find chairs of geometry and 
astronomy, as well as of Greek literature.* 

Spite of the efforts of the Eastern emperors, 
however, learning was rare, literature and science non- 
existent. Law alone survived, and was alone pro- 
gressive. The age which had in Libanius, the friend 
of Julian, its most noted man of letters, had broken 
for ever with the Hellenic past. Notwithstanding 
the fact that a new university was, in the end of the 
fourth century, instituted at Constantinople ; that 
Alexandria still had a reputation, especially in medi- 
cine and mathematics ; that Athens was still vivacious, 
if not living ; that Antioch was a worthy rival of 
Athens ; that Carthage had a high reputation ; that 
the university schools at Rome and Berytus main- 
tained a high level of law teaching ; — spite of all 
these things, the soul had departed from the Eastern 
as well as from the Western schools : there was a 
universal decadence, which in half a century ended 
in death. The reforms attempted in the West by 
Ausonius (A.D. 367-383) had failed to arrest the 
general decline. Some think that he might have 
succeeded. I doubt it. The causes of decline lay 
too deep, and were of a kind not to be removed 
by authoritative regulations. All educational insti- 
tutions must die which do not directly and con- 

* Finlay's ** Byzantine Empire," ii. 25. Again, in the eleventh 
century, the logic of Psellus, emanating from Constantinople, may be 
almost said to have made an epoch in scholastic studies. 



ROMANO-HELLENIC SCHOOLS. 17 

spicuously promote either the spiritual or the material 
interests of men. The Romano-Hellenic schools had 
ceased to do either the one or the other, save in the 
department of law at Rome, Berytus, and Byzantium, 
and perhaps, of medicine in Alexandria. 

Note. — Of the chairs endowed by Marcus Aurelius at Athens, 
Grafenhahn says (iii. 29) that two were set apart for each of the four 
philosophical schools — Platonist, Peripatetic, Stoic, and Epicurean. 



i8 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 



LECTURE II. 

INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON EDUCATION, 
AND RISE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 

CONSTANTINE placed the Christian cross on his 
banner in A.D. 312, and he convoked the first General 
Council of Christians at Nice in 325. 

Theodosius II. ascended the throne in 408. In 
his Code the following words are to be found: 
" Pagani qui supersunt . . . quamquam jam nullos 
esse credamus."* This was an exaggerated, though 
perhaps politic, declaration ; for we cannot believe 
that the revival of paganism under Julian, who 
died only forty-five years before, could have been 
so utterly hollow and artificial as to have been 
wholly submerged by the returning wave of Chris- 
tianity under his successors. Still the words quoted 
from the Code mark the end of the struggle 
between the old and the new. Paganism was 
now dead, though pagans might still exist. But we 
are not to infer that the influence of Christianity on 

♦ MuUinger's " Schools of Charles the Great," p. 3, 



RISE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 19 

the schools dates only from the beginning of the 
fifth century, when it was everywhere triumphant. 
The death of Plotinus two hundred years before this 
date marks, it seems to me, the extinction of Romano- 
Hellenic ideas in the middle and higher schools. 
The philosophical and literary movements had 
exhausted themselves. There was no longer an 
inspiring idea and aim ; and, without these, an 
institution is dying, if not dead, though to the eye 
of sense it may seem still to live. While buildings, 
organization, libraries, and endowments last, it may 
revive, but it can do so only under the influence of 
an antiquarian reaction (always artificial and fleeting) 
or of a new philosophy of life. 

All genuine activity of intellect outside the Chris- 
tian writers was now confined to the students of law. 
That the judicial mind of the Roman should find not 
only a congenial field for its activity, but, under the 
new imperial conditions, a strong and imperative de- 
mand on its powers, we can easily understand. The 
consolidation of the empire must have called for 
the exercise of all the resources of jurisprudence, and 
the transference of the seat of power to the East 
must have further stimulated the juristic mind by 
bringing accepted principles and precedents into rela- 
tion with new emergencies. The unity of the empire, 
from Augustus onwards, was in point of fact merely 
another expression for the supremacy of authority 
and law over mdividualism and subjectivity. Indeed, 



20 MEDIALVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

may we not say that Hellenic freedom of speculation 
on all subjects, human and divine, could have been 
allowed to exist only on condition that there was a 
firm controlling hand at head-quarters? Imperial 
unity, which meant the peace of the world, was an idea 
which might well have engaged the passionate support 
of the philanthropist, whether pagan or Christian. 

Unfortunately the empire was unable to sustain 
itself. The burden was too great for any one central 
authority permanently to bear. The want of moral 
earnestness, the extinction of the old families, the 
inequalities of wealth, the decrease of the numbers 
of free citizens, the corrupting effects of slavery, the 
dissoluteness of those who ought by their example to 
have moralized the supreme power, the venality of the 
law courts, and the pressure of barbarian hordes, were 
gradually leading the empire to its dissolution.* The 
new formative force of Christianity had been mean- 
while slowly winning its way, and finding its justifi- 
cation and opportunity in the disintegration of ancient 
morals, philosophies, and religions. 

I have already pointed out that the decay of 
the schools was not due to any neglect on the part 
of the governing authorities. In the greatest days 
of Greece, education was widespread, but except in 
Sparta it was not organized. With the empire came 

* I quite understand that the Western empire did not in the fifth 
century absolutely die, and that the Byzantine rule, as a purely con« 
servative power, held the East together for a thousand years. 



RISE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS, 21 

organization in this as in every other department of 
social life, and organization meant buildings, endow- 
ments, and privileges. It is a curious but, I think, 
undeniable fact that from the time education became 
an object of solicitude to the civil power, genuine 
philosophic ardour and literary productivity began to 
decline, and a marked and steady decay of the scien- 
tific spirit was visible. The endowments at Athens, 
the elaborate organization of learning at Alexandria, 
and the Athenaeum at Rome, had not, after all, at- 
tained the end of advancing the knowledge either 
of nature or of mind. They were all exercising- 
grounds for intellect, however, and so gave a certain 
training and discipline to the more ambitious youth 
of the empire. The only studies which bore the marks 
of genuineness were, as I have said, law and, to some 
extent (in Alexandria), medicine and mathematics, and 
it may be confidently maintained that law and medi- 
cine preserved their vitality not because of any specu- 
lative interest in these studies, but simply because of 
their direct bearing on human welfare and on profes- 
sional success. Grammar had lost itself in verbal criti- 
cism ; dialectic had passed into verbal eristic ; rhetoric 
had become, where it was not a mass of rules for 
being eloquent (necessarily futile), mere sophistic ; 
and philosophy, except in the hands of Plotinus, had 
been vitiated by Oriental theosophy, had become void 
through the absence of ethical purpose, and in the 
end degraded by alliance with Egyptian magic. 



22 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

The edict of Justinian which, in 529, finally sup- 
pressed the mother school of Athens, did not come 
a day too soon. There were, as will appear from 
what I have said, many causes for this decline and 
final extinction quite apart from Christian antipathy, 
and among them I would note one which specially 
concerns Athens, and which, though of minor im- 
portance, yet deserves mention — I mean the compe- 
tition of rival lecturers. Competition in the domain 
of science and philosophy is not proof against vulgar 
motives any more than the competitions of the 
market-place. It very soon ceases to be a generous 
rivalry of intellect, and becomes a mere commercial 
contest. If there be one thing more certain than 
another, it is that pure devotion to science and 
philosophy is utterly incompatible with the mental 
disturbance and degradation involved in academic 
shopkeeping. 

I say that the decline was not due solely to 
Christian antipathy. At the same time, that had 
largely contributed to the decline ; and had Chris- 
tianity assumed a purely negative attitude to the 
Romano-Hellenic life and culture, and done no more, 
it would have to be classed among the destructive 
powers of barbarism. But it had its positive side : 
it had in it a power to build up as well as to throw 
down. It introduced more than one new idea into 
the life of our race. It broadened and deepened the 
sentiment of the common brotherhood of man by 



liJSE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 23 

giving to human sympathy and love a divine sanction. 
But most important of all, it fortified the sense of 
personality. The individual was now not only a free, 
thinking spirit which had its personal life and personal 
rights ; but this spirit, the true person of each indi- 
vidual, was nov/ seen to be rooted in God — to be 
of infinite importance even in His eyes. Thus, by 
one stroke as it were, the personality of each man 
was deepened, nay consecrated, while at the same 
time his bond of sympathy with all other human 
beings was strengthened. Two opposite results were 
thus attained : and these two were conciliated. For 
the deepening of man's spiritual, personal life meant 
in truth the life with God, and it was in and through 
this life that his personality became a matter of infinite 
worth. But this rooting of the finite subject in the 
eternal and universal Reason, while giving infinite 
worth to the soul of each man, at the same time 
made impossible that insolence of individualism and 
self-assertion which had characterized the subjective 
movement among the Greeks. Man became, as a 
personality, much greater than the most exalted 
Stoic could have conceived ; but by the very same 
act, he was taught humility, dependence, humanity, 
love. 

As may be easily understood, that part of the 
new doctrine which taught that man lived for a 
hereafter, and that this life was a preparation for 
that hereafter, first told on the educational efforts of 



24 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

the time. The leaders of the Church directed them- 
selves chiefly to catechizing and instructing with a 
view to a city not of this world, and they did so in 
expectation of the early dissolution of all things. 
They also began to prepare ministers for the Church ; 
for the people had to be instructed in the new philo- 
sophy of life, and temple services had to be conducted. 
There was great moral activity in the new " sect ; " 
and, so far as education was concerned, it might fairly 
be said that every Christian assemblage where the 
Gospels were read, prayers offered, and hymns sung, 
was a people's school. To discharge this religious 
duty, and to train its ministers, was as much as the 
infant community could be expected to do. This it 
did in the catechetical and, afterwards, in the epis- 
copal schools.* 

The Christian conception of education, however, 
was, unfortunately (like that of old Cato), narrow. 
It tended steadily to concentrate and contract men's 
intellectual interests. The Christian did not think 
of the culture of the whole man. He could not con- 
sistently do so. His sole purpose was the salvation of 
the soul. This temporal life was only the threshold of 
the true life. Salvation was to be attained through 
abnegation of the world and through faith. Faith 
tended to degenerate into merely intellectual accept- 
ance of dogma among the intelligent, and credulity 

* These schools, as distinct from pagan institutions^^ date from the 
close of the second century. 



RISE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 2$ 

and superstition among the masses. Abnegation, too, 
degenerated into asceticism. Hence a twofold result : 
the gradual substitution of alien authority, dominating 
a timid and cowardly subjectivity, for the free move- 
ment of reason, and the divorcement of man from 
this world in the interests of another. 

Christianity, accordingly, found itself necessarily 
placed in mortal antagonism to ''Humanitas" and 
Hellenism, and had to go through the troublous ex- 
periences of nearly fourteen hundred years before 
the' possibility of the union of reason with authority, 
of religion with Hellenism, could be conceived. This 
antagonism was, however, for the first two centuries 
of the Christian era, latent. Christian bishops ob- 
tained all the instruction and shared all the learning 
of their time, being, however, always on their guard 
against its hurtful influences. Tertullian, who died 
A.D. 245, decides in favour of Christians attending 
pagan schools on grounds of necessity, but warns 
them to select the good and to reject the evil neces- 
sarily associated with the instruction there given. 
The " Apostolical Constitutions " ascribed to the 
middle of the fourth century are, Mr. Bass Mullinger 
says, hostile to the reading of pagan authors, and he 
quotes from them (i. 6) as follows : " Refrain from 
all the writings of the heathen ; for what hast thou 
to do with strange discourses, laws, or false prophets, 
which, in truth, turn aside from the faith those who 
are weak in understanding?" and so forth. In the 



26 MEDL^VAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

East, St. Basil (died 379) took a more liberal view 
of Greek literature. In the West, St. Augustine (who 
died in 395), in his book "De Ordine," commends 
the study of grammar, rhetoric, and heathen writers 
generally, but only for Christian purposes and for the 
mental discipline they give. 

As was, indeed, inevitable, theological discussions 
more and more occupied the active intellect of the time, 
to the subordination, if not total neglect, of humane 
letters and philosophy. The Latin and Greek classics 
were ultimately denounced. As the offspring of the 
pagan world, if not, indeed, inspired by demons, they 
were dangerous to the new faith. The apostasy of 
Julian must have convinced any doubting ecclesiastics 
of this danger. In 398, the Fourth Council of Car- 
thage formally prohibited the reading of secular books 
even by the bishops. The learned St. Jerome (died 
420) condemned the study of the classics, except for 
"pious uses;" and, in his later and more ascetic period, 
he rejoices over the growing neglect of Plato and 
Aristotle, although he himself, as a younger man, 
had taught them in his convent at Bethlehem. Even 
so late as the beginning of the sixth century, when 
Christianity had been everywhere triumphant, and 
there was less to fear, the learned Cassiodorus, after 
impressing on the monks of his foundation at Viviers 
the special study of the Scriptures and the Fathers, 
cautiously says, "The holy Fathers have passed no 
decree binding us to repudiate secular literature ; for, 



RISE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 27 

in fact, such reading prepares the mind in no sh'ght 
measure for understanding the sacred writings." * 

After the death of Augustine (395), the Romano- 
Hellenic schools, which had been steadily losing 
ground, may be said to have practically died out, 
with the exception of a few survivals in Gaul and 
Africa, the Mesopotamian schools of Edessa and 
Nisibis, and the law school of Berytus. Sidonius 
Apollinaris, who died in 488, says, *' Young men no 
longer study, professors no longer have pupils ; know- 
ledge languishes and dies." In the subsequent gene- 
ration, Boethius and Cassiodorus may be regarded 
as the last Romano-Hellenic product. The latter 
(born about 470), the able minister of Theodoric the 
Great, alarmed at the universal decline of learning, 
retired to Viviers in Calabria, and there, in 540, 
endeavoured to institute a monastic college, in which 
should be revived the old classical studies ; but ap- 
parently without much success, at least of a perma- 
nent character. 

Schools, however, of some kind were needed which 
should be in accordance with Christian requirements ; 
and as early as the beginning of the third century 
these began to appear, though they had not yet by 
any means superseded the Romano-Hellenic schools. 
They were under the superintendence of the bishops ; 
and those who frequented them with a view to the 

* Newman's " Historical Sketches," ii. 453. 



28 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

Christian ministry were presumed to have already 
passed through the ordinary public schools of the 
country. They long existed side by side with the 
schools of the Grammatici and the higher or uni- 
versity institutions, and in Alexandria, owing to the 
conflict there of Jewish and Gnostic opinions, they 
were characterized by considerable activity. These 
Christian catechetical schools (the first of which was 
founded by Pantsenus in i8i, at Alexandria) increased 
in number and efficiency at the episcopal seats. Not 
only were intending priests educated in them, but 
certain of the laity also began to receive at least 
elementary instruction. The Church in the end of 
the fourth century, after the death of Julian, gained 
control over education. At some of the more im- 
portant of the Christian schools, also, the "trivial" 
course began to be given, thus superseding entirely 
the school of the Grammaticus. Meanwhile, St. 
Martin, in imitation, doubtless, of what he had seen 
in the East when a soldier under Julian, had, in 361, 
founded at Liguge in Maine, the first monastery, and 
afterwards that of Tours (372), and so initiated, with 
a new educational conception, a new machinery. St. 
Basil was at this time giving a " rule " to the monas- 
teries and schools of the East, and St. Martin may 
have met him.* 

* The influence of Athanasius, when he took refuge in Rome in 341, 
was, I think, restricted to purely monastic institutions and the "re- 
ligious " life. So also at Treves. 



KISE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 29 

At the very time when the ancient culture had 
become practically extinct (for the appearance of a 
man now and then with some classical tastes only 
served to illustrate the universal decay), we find in 
the East, as I have shown in the previous lecture, an 
endeavour to resuscitate education, at the university 
of Constantinople and through the monastic rule of 
St. Basil ; and, now in the West, we encounter a co- 
temporary movement, conceived in a much narrower 
spirit, towards the final supplanting of the Romano- 
Hellenic school by one formed on a purely Chris- 
tian model. Cassian, born (probably in Marseilles) 
about 370, after spending many years among the 
hermits and cenobites of the Thebais, returned to 
Gaul in 404, and there founded, in imitation of the 
Egyptian institutions, the monastery of St. Victor 
at Marseilles. He contributed also to the institution 
of the afterwards much-celebrated monastery of 
Lerins on a neighbouring island. 

The characteristic of the Western monastic system, 
as opposed to the Oriental, was that work, in the shape 
of farming, teaching, or charitable services, formed 
an essential part of its "rule." The monasteries of 
Cassian were schools as well as religious retreats. We 
find that in him the anti-Hellenic feeling in education 
culminated. He had completely dissociated himself 
from all humanistic ideas, and he entertained a pro- 
found distrust of all human learning, even when appHed 
to Scripture. The study of the Scriptures and devo- 



30 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

tional exercises constituted the intellectual as well as 
the religious end of the monastic life. With these 
exercises he united severe bodily labour. It does 
not appear that, at first, any, save young aspirants 
to the " religious " life, were taught. It was only some 
time after the foundation of the Benedictine Order, 
to which I shall immediately refer, that externs seem 
to have been admitted to the monastery schools. 
The instruction given was, as might have been 
expected, of the most meagre character. The boys 
were taught to read, merely that "they might 
study the Bible and understand the services ; to 
write, in order that they might multiply copies of 
the sacred books and of the psalter ; to understand 
music, that they might give with due effect the 
Ambrosian chant."* A little arithmetic was given 
in order to fit the few who had a turn that way to 
calculate the return of Easter and the other Church 
festivals. Cassian's position was quite logical. It 
is difficult to see how any man, with his views 
of human life and destiny, could countenance any 
learning whatsoever. The arts and sciences be- 
longed to the vain shows and babblements of an 
irreligious world, and the fancies and fictions of 
the poets were the product of the spirits of evil 
who constantly haunted the steps of men, at once 
guiding the pen of Virgil and animating the oracle 
of Delphi. 

♦ Mullinger, p. 31. 



JilSE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 31 

But though Cassian, notwithstanding the previous 
action of St. Martin, may be said to have laid the 
foundations of the new education, it was to St. Bene- 
dict and his order, a hundred years later, that the 
mediaeval Church truly owed the Christian school. 
Born in 480 at Nursia, Benedict withdrew, after a 
youth remarkable even after we throw out the fabulous 
elements, to Monte Cassino, near Naples ; and there, 
in 428, founded a monastery on the site of a temple 
of Apollo. He had educational as well as religious 
aims from the first, and it is to the monks of his 
rapidly extending order, or to the influence which 
their "rule" exercised on other conventual orders, 
such as the Columban, that we owe the diffusion 
of schools in the earlier half of the Middle Ages and 
the preservation of ancient learning. The Benedictine 
monks not only taught in their own monasteries, but 
were everywhere in demand as heads of episcopal 
or cathedral schools. 

St. Benedict was not himself a man of learning, 
but he was deeply impressed with the necessity of 
a Christian education. It was of him that Pope 
Gregory the Great said that he was " knowingly un- 
knowing, wisely unlearned." Of the rules of his order, 
those which imposed the duty of instructing the 
young novices, from the age of seven to fourteen, 
and of transcribing manuscripts, placed the mediaeval 
and modern world under incalculable obligations. 
For the monks themselves he specified no authors 
6 



32 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

except Cassian * and the Scriptures of the Old and 
New Testaments, together with such expositions 
thereon as ** the most illustrious doctors of the 
orthodox faith and the Catholic Fathers had com- 
piled."! His object was not learning-, but a life 
of combined labour and asceticism ; and even the 
commentaries to which I have referred were not 
much favoured, though generally commended. The 
reading prescribed to the monks had in view solely 
the cultivation in them of the religious life as opposed 
to the life of the world. These Benedictine com- 
munities multiplied rapidly over Europe, and extended 
the blessing of elementary, and frequently of more 
advanced, instruction to many who contemplated 
secular vocations. But always restricted ; for edu- 
cation even of the monk by the monk was in itself 
a contradiction of the great aim of those who felt 
a call to cenobite life — summa quies. Even Cardinal 
Newman says, the monk "cared little for knowledge, 
even theological ; or for success, even though religious. 
It is the character of such a man to be contented, 
resigned, patient, incurious ; to create or originate 
nothing ; to live by tradition." { 

Passing by the work of the greatest of the popes 
— Gregory — the historian of education now finds him- 

♦ The Collationes, or Conferences of Cassian, published as a record 
of conversations held by him with the monks and holy men of Egypt, 
t Mullinger, in "Diet. Christ. Antiq." 
J " Historical Sketches," ii. 452. 



RISE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 33 

self irresistibly attracted by Ireland. It v/as when 
the efforts of the learned Cassiodorus were failing in 
Calabria that Irish education received its first impulse. 
Mr. Mullinger is disposed to be of opinion that Irish 
Christian civilization dates from the time of St. 
Jerome, and that Ireland received its traditions 
straight from the East by way of Marseilles. Its 
scholastic foundations certainly affiliated themselves 
in spirit to Basil and Martin rather than to Cassian. 
Dr. Skene * proves, I think, that Ireland received its 
monastic life first through St. Ninian's monastery of 
Candida Casa, planted in Galloway in honour of St. 
Martin, and also from Wales by the agency of St. 
Finnian, who founded Clonard. This is certain, that 
the Irish or Scoti cultivated Greek and Latin literature 
when other parts of the civilized world had ceased to 
do so, and that they were much given to dialectic dis- 
putation. There was a living scholarship among them 
and a genuine speculative spirit., It was an Irish 
scholar, Maeldurf, who taught Aldhelm at Malmes-. 
bury in the seventh century; and the Greek monk, 
Theodore of Tarsus, was, on his assuming the pri- 
macy of England, surrounded, says Aldhelm, by 
Irish scholars. The celebrated Irish schools must 
have been founded in the beginning of the sixth 
century. " While almost the whole of Europe," says 
Dollinger, "was desolated by war, peaceful Ireland, 
free from the invasions of external foes, opened to 

♦ "Celtic Scotland," ii. 2. 



34 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

the lovers of learning and piety a welcome asylum." 
From these Irish schools went forth the founders of 
monasteries and bearers of learning to England, Scot- 
land, France, and Germany. 

In the seventh and eighth centuries, largely 
under Irish and English influence, monastery schools 
and convents for female education increased in 
number, not only in England but on the continent 
of Europe. But while the frequent regulations made 
in different parts of the Catholic world by councils 
show clearly enough that the Church was anxious to 
extend education, the schools were, as yet, sparse, 
and the results of their teaching very meagre except 
in a few famous monasteries. Efforts were from time 
to time made by leading ecclesiastics to institute 
schools, and, by the help of the monastery founda- 
tions, much was unquestionably accomplished. The 
main and, in the majority of cases, the sole object, 
however, was the education of the monkish recluse 
and of the regular priest. Until this was attained, 
the extension of education into the secular ranks 
was manifestly impossible. Nay, to give the merest 
rudiments of learning even to all the working clergy 
was beyond the power of the mediaeval machinery. 
This state of things is not to be ascribed so much 
to the waning of the Benedictine enthusiasm as to the 
magnitude of the task to be accomplished, the in- 
adequacy of the instruments available, and the con- 
fused state of Europe. Meanwhile, wherever an 



RISE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 35 

ardent ecclesiastic wished to benefit his fellow-men, 
he not only founded a monastery, but in connection 
with it also, in most cases, a school. St. Maur, the 
chief of Benedict's apostles, and St. Columban, both 
towards the close of the sixth century, and St. Boni- 
face in the eighth, were in this way powerful agents in 
the civilization of Europe, Even when their schools 
were of little importance, the monasteries were as 
lights in dark places. The mere example of men 
leading a religious, studious, orderly, and industrious 
life was itself the best possible education to the 
semi-barbarians by whom the young communities 
were surrounded. 

In England, meanwhile, under the primacy of the 
learned Theodore of Tarsus (668-690), and the teaching 
of Irish immigrants, education made considerable pro- 
gress in the seventh and eighth centuries. Out of this 
revival came ^Elbert, the teacher of York School, his 
pupil Alcuin, and also the Venerable Bede, who died 
in 735. Bede says, according to Newman, that in his 
time there were monks in England who knew Latin 
and Greek as well as they knew their mother-tongue ; 
but, according to Mullinger, this was said by him only 
of Albinus, who was taught Greek by Theodore. Bede 
himself was the most learned and scholarly fruit of 
the revival. " I spent my whole life," he says, " in 
the same monastery [Jarrow, in Northumberland], and, 
while attentive to the rule of my order and the service 
of the Church, my constant pleasure lay in learning 



36 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

or teaching, or writing." Alcuin, also, was an excellent 
product of the learning of his time. In himself, 
indeed, he was a summary of it. Its character and 
its scope as well as its limitations were all well exem- 
plified in him. We shall meet him shortly at the 
court of Charlemagne. It was to Theodore of Tarsus 
and his school at Canterbury, quite as much as to the 
Irish monks, that the revival in England seems to 
have been due. The " Greek " period at St. Galle 
was, I think, short-lived, and the knowledge professed 
quite elementary. 

In the seventh and eighth centuries, again, there 
was a revival in Spain, but the limits of it were very 
restricted. The chief fruit of it was Isidorus (lumen 
Hispaniae), who died in 636, and whose long-cele- 
brated " Origines Etymologicse " — an encyclopaedia of 
the learning of the time — formed one of the leading 
text-books of the higher education all through the 
Middle Ages. 

Cardinal Newman, through his enthusiastic admira- 
tion of certain monasteries and monks, allows himself 
to speak of the state of learning in Europe in the first 
half of the Middle Ages, in terms which will not bear 
a moment's investigation. The same remark applies to 
Montalembert. Progress was certainly being made, and 
some conventual institutions were, in truth, colleges of 
"all learning," as then understood. But even in the best 
of these education seldom went beyond the trivium ; 



RISE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 37 

and even this was pursued in a barren and arid spirit. 
Grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic were certainly 
studied, but chiefly in bald epitomes. The cost of 
manuscript books, much enhanced by the high price 
of parchment during the Middle Ages,* compelled 
the monks to have recourse to dictation, the scholars 
writing down on tablets and learning by heart what 
they were taught. Nothing, of course, was questioned. 
The youth of ancient Greece and of the earlier empire 
v/ere brought into contact with the substance of 
literature, music, and eloquence in their elementary 
and grammar schools ; and those who continued their 
studies in the higher schools continued to occupy 
themselves with all the realities of knowledge. The 
schools of the Middle Ages, on the contrary, in the 
spirit of the Carthaginian decree, forswore literature 
and reality, and were disciplined by the merely formal 
and instrumental, and this in its most barren shape. 
The only " realities," indeed, were Scripture truth 
and the writings of the Fathers ; and the higher 
education was practically confined to these.f A few 
monks, doubtless, especially in England, took a wider 
sweep, and studied all that was contained in the 
great text-books of the Middle Ages from the sixth 

* Caused by the occupation of Egypt by the Saracens. 

t "Cfeterse igitur qusecunque notiones ac scientioe baud aliter 
monachis erant in pretio, nisi quatenus ad talem finem (ad exercitium 
christianarum religiosarumque virtutum) refex-ebantur et quatenus sibi 
ipsis inservire poterant ut prcefatam metam attingerent " (Mabillon, i. p. 
5, cited by Cramer in his " Gesch. der Erz, u. des Unt. in dem Nied.") 



38 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

to the thirteenth century, viz. Boethius, Isidorus, and 
Martianus Capella.* They thus maintained the tra- 
dition of the seven liberal arts. 

On the whole, the episcopal schools or seminaries, 
and the monastery schools, both of which had pro- 
mised well in the sixth century, had not fulfilled 
their promise. Indeed, they had retrograded in the 
seventh and eighth, except at a i^v^ centres in 
England, though their number had increased. Litera- 
ture, philosophy, and science were all alike forgotten. 
Even the language of the Church — Latin — was badly 
taught, and had woefully degenerated. It is precisely 
at this time that we find the beginnings of a reform. 

* Generally denounced by the European Church as containing the 
seeds of scepticism, but in great favour with the Irish monks. 



LECTURE III. 

CHARLEMAGNE AND THE NINTH CENTURY. 

Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz (742-766), endeavoured 
to reform the episcopal schools by setting an example 
of a strict canonical organization in connection with 
his Cathedral Church. But the influence of the 
canonical rule (a modification of the Benedictine *), 
introduced by him, was for long very restricted in 
its range, and we are entitled to say that the edu- 
cation of Europe was in a barbarous state when 
Charles the Great (born 742, died 814), Emperor of the 
West, and crowned Emperor of the Romans by the 
pope, endeavoured to revive learning. " The study of 
letters," he said, "had been well-nigh extinguished by 
the neglect of his ancestors." f St. Boniface, coming 
from England, had done his best to reform an episco- 
pate and Church already flagrantly corrupt, while at 
the same time extending the bounds of Christianity 
among the Teutonic races. It was the reform and 

* Adopted in 816-17 by the General Council of Aachen after 
Charles's death. For some of the rules, see Skene, ii. 6. 

t "Constitutio de emendatione librorum," etc., Baluze, i. 204, 205, 
cited by Mr. Mullinger, p. 69. 



40 MEDI/EVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

extension of the Church, however, and only inci- 
dentally of the school, that engaged his zeal. Charle- 
magne, as a boy, had been a witness of his work, and 
when he ascended the throne he gave effect to many 
of his ecclesiastical views. For subjecting the trans- 
alpine churches to the pope, Charles has been blamed, 
but only by those (it seems to me) whose historical 
imasfination is too weak to enable them to understand 
the then state of Europe. 

Charles early saw that without a more thorough 
education of the priesthood, reforms, however well 
conceived, would be evanescent, and he, accordingly, 
devoted himself to the reorganization and extension of 
the episcopal and monastery schools. It is from his 
capitularies, and his life by Eginhard (Einhard), that 
we obtain the most trustworthy information of the 
state of education towards the close of the eighth 
century, when the reforms began. 

In one of these capitularies he complains of the 
uncouth and illiterate diction of the letters which he 
received even from monasteries of good standing. 
He found also that a large number of the manu- 
scripts of the Scriptures were almost undecipherable 
owing to the utter ignorance of the monkish copyists. 
Charlemagne himself began to learn to write, it is 
said, after he was on the throne.* To his court at 

* I think this must have reference to writing on parchment with 
pen and ink, and that he was already able to write with the style on 
waxen tablets. [Since I wrote this, I see that the suggestion has been 
iuade by others, but that MuUinger rejects it.] 



CHARLEMAGNE AND THE NINTH CENTURY. 41 

Aix he invited such men of learning as could be 
found. Leidrade of Noricum and Alcuin of York were 
his chief counsellors — the latter occupying a post 
which we should now designate Minister of Public 
Instruction and of Public Worship. 

In connection with the emperor's efforts, a story is 
told which has a legendary sound, but for which there 
seems to be sufficient evidence to justify our repeat- 
ing it, as it is narrated by Bulaeus, on the authority 
of a treatise published about half a century after 
Charlemagne's death. The incident is said to have 
been communicated to the writer by the son of one 
of Alcuin's pupils. When Alcuin was already at 
Charlemagne's court in Aix-la-Chapelle, two Scoti, 
called Claud Clement and John Melrose (so called 
from the town of Melrose*), arrived at the capital 
in the company of some English traders. Amidst 
the ordinary cries of the market-place the towns- 
people were astonished to hear the two Scotsmen 
calling out, " If any one wants knowledge, let him 
come to us and get it ; for we have it to sell " (Si 
quis sapientiae cupidus est, veniat ad nos, et accipiat 
earn : nam venalis est apud nos). The people thought 



* Notwithstanding the special mention of the town of Mehose, both 
the Scots were probably Irishmen. There was a Columbite monastery 
founded by Aidan in the eighth century, at Melrose, which was destroyed 
about 834. It is well known that Irishmen or Scoti were always to be 
found in the monasteries of Scotland as well as England. It is not 
impossible, however, that John may not only have come from Melrose, 
but have been an Angle. See Skene's " Celtic Scotland," ii. 5. 



42 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

the men mad. But the incident having reached the 
monarch's ears, he sent for Clement and Melrose, and 
asked them whether they really had knowledge to 
sell, and what they asked for it. They replied that 
they had, and that its price was " a place to teach it 
in, pupils to learn it, and needful food and raiment." 
Charlemagne accepted their services, established a 
schola in his palace under Clement and Alcuin, and 
taking Melrose with him to his Italian wars, settled 
him as superintendent of a schola at Pavia. 

This is the legendary origin of the Palace or 
Palatine School for members of the court and their 
children, and indeed open to all who were desirous 
of obtaining education. The researches of Dom Pitra 
seem to show that Charlemagne's Palace School had 
been anticipated by a royal school at Chartres under 
Clotaire 11. This school was taught by Betharius, 
a Roman of good family, who had been trained 
at Viviers, the school of Cassiodorus. He became 
Bishop of Chartres in 594. 

Apart from legend, we know that Charles met 
Alcuin at Padua, in Italy, where he had been sent on 
an important embassy from York, and urged him, then 
and afterwards, to come to his court at Aachen and 
carry out educational reforms. This invitation was 
accepted by Alcuin in 782. Alcuin was the pupil of 
yElbert, Archbishop of York, and Egbert, scholasticus 
there, and was himself headmaster or scholasticus of 
the Monastery School at York at the time that he 



CHARLEMAGNE AND THE NINTH CENTURY. 43 

yielded to Charles's solicitations to leave his native 
country. Peter of Pisa seems to have held some kind 
of tutorial post at the court of Charles's father, but he 
was growing old and had little or nothing to do with 
the reformation now set on foot by the emperor, with 
the help of Alcuin. 

In my last lecture I adverted to the revival 
in England, under the Greek Primate Theodore, 
seconded by Scots immigrant monks. The most 
important fruit of that revival was Bede, the North- 
umbrian, to whom I referred in the last lecture, 
and who died in 735. Albinus, for a time teacher 
of the York school, a learned man, was the friend 
and coadjutor of Bede. He was succeeded by 
Egbert, the teacher of Alcuin. Alcuin was thus 
one of the last products of the English revival, and 
he now transferred his activities to the Continent of 
Europe. 

After establishing the Palace School,* designed 
largely for the laity, and letting it be understood that 
those who distinguished themselves as scholars would 
receive promotion in the state, however humble their 
origin, Charles took up the large question of edu- 
cation in his empire generally. 

Under Alcuin's advice, he issued instructions for 
the reform of schools in 'jZj. As this has been justly 
regarded as a document of great significance in 

• For a most interesting and graphic account of the school, I would 
refer the reader to MuUinger's " Schools of Charles the Great." 



44 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

educational history, I shall here quote it, taking 
Mr. Mullinger's translation * : — 

" Charles, by the grace of God, King of the 
Franks and of the Lombards, and Patrician of the 
Romans, to Bangulfus, abbot, and to his whole 
congregation and the faithful committed to his 
charge : Be it known to your devotion, pleasing to 
God, that in conjunction with our faithful we have 
judged it to be of utility that, in the bishoprics and 
monasteries committed by Christ's favour to our 
charge, care should be taken that there shall be not 
only a regular manner of life and one conformable to 
holy religion, but also the study of letters, each to 
teach and learn them according to his ability and the 
divine assistance. For even as due observance of the 
rule of the house tends to good morals, so zeal on the 
part of the teacher and the taught imparts order and 
grace to sentences ; and those who seek to please 
God by living aright should also not neglect to please 
him by right speaking. It is written, ' By thine own 
words shalt thou be justified or condemned ; ' and 
although right doing be preferable to right speaking, 
yet must the knowledge of what is right precede right 
action. Every one, therefore, should strive to under- 
stand what it is he would fain accomplish ; and this 
right understanding will be the sooner gained 
according as the utterances of the tongue are free 
from error. And if false speaking is to be shunned 

* The original is also quoted by Mabillon, part i. c. 9. 



CHARLEMAGNE AND THE NINTH CENTURY. 45 

by all men, especially should it be shunned by those 
who have elected to be the servants of the truth. 
During past years we have often received letters from 
different monasteries, informing us that at their sacred 
services the brethren offered up prayers on our 
behalf; and we have observed that the thoughts 
contained in these letters, though in themselves most 
just, were expressed in uncouth language, and while 
pious devotion dictated the sentiments, the unlettered 
tongue was unable to express them aright. Hence 
there has arisen in our minds the fear lest, if the skill 
to write rightly were thus lacking, so too would the 
power of rightly comprehending the sacred Scriptures 
be far less than was fitting ; and we all know that 
though verbal errors be dangerous, errors of the 
understanding are yet more so. We exhort you, 
therefore, not only not to neglect the study of letters, 
but to apply yourselves thereto with perseverance 
and with that humility which is well- pleasing to God ; 
so that you may be able to penetrate with greater 
ease and certainty the mysteries of the Holy Scrip- 
tures. For as these contain images, tropes, and 
similar figures, it is impossible to doubt that the 
reader will arrive far more readily at the spiritual 
sense according as he is the better instructed in 
learning. Let there, therefore, be chosen for this 
work men who are both able and willing to learn, 
and also desirous of instructing others ; and let them 
apply themselves to the work with a zeal equalling 



46 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

the earnestness with which wc recommend it to 
them. 

" It is our wish that you may be what it behoves 
the soldiers of the Church to be, — rehgious in heart, 
learned in discourse, pure in act, eloquent in speech ; 
so that all who approach your house, in order to 
invoke the Divine Master or to behold the excellence 
of the religious life, may be edified in beholding you, 
and instructed in hearing you discourse or chant, and 
may return home rendering thanks to God most high. 

" Fail not, as thou regardest our favour, to send a 
copy of this letter to all thy suffragans and to all the 
monasteries ; and let no monk go beyond his mon- 
astery to administer justice, or to enter the assemblies 
and the voting-places. Adieu." 

Teachers of singing, arithmetic, and grammar 
were about the same time imported from Rome that 
they might visit the monasteries and help to revive 
the teaching. 

In 789 Charles again sent out an edict to the 
heads of monasteries and to the clergy, enjoining 
them to look out for boys to train as priests and 
monks, not only among the sons of slaves as hereto- 
fore, but of freemen. He further requires that in con- 
nection with every episcopal see and every monastery 
there shall be a school for instruction in the psalms, 
singing, notation, counting, and the Latin tongue, 
and that the pupils shall be supplied with accurately 
transcribed text-books.* 

* Mii]line:er nnd Viriville. 



CHARLEMAGNE AND THE NINTH CENTURY. 47 

Alcuin, having resigned the mastership of the 
Palace School, was appointed to the abbacy of St. 
Martin de Tours in 796, and raised the school there 
to so high a reputation, that scholars flocked to it 
from all parts of the Continent, as well as from Eng- 
land and Ireland. Alcuin's influence was thereby 
greatly increased, but, while it was of a kind doubt- 
less to suit his time, it was certainly not of a liberal 
character, owing to his distrust of all pagan literature. 
He was an estimable man, and a good administrator, 
but of no original genius, and cast in a monastic 
mould. 

By appointing Leidrade of Noricum to the see of 
Lyons (798), and Theodulf of Italy to that of Orleans 
(794), Charles secured for his educational schemes 
potent ministers under Alcuin. Theodulf not only 
founded important schools, but he issued to the clergy 
of his diocese an order to institute schools in the 
burghs and villages where the faithful might receive 
elementary mstniction grattdtously. 

The emperor was fond of music, and promoted the 
reform of Church singing, introducing the Gregorian 
chants, and, it is said, also the organ. His services 
to literature include a collection of Gothic songs and 
verses ; and a collection of all the best passages from 
the Fathers which he appointed to be read in churches 
has to be specially noted (Capitulary of 'J^'S). In law 
he endeavoured to apply the Theodosian Code. He 
is also said to have studied the works of Vitruvius, 



48 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

and with his own hand to have prepared the design 
of the imperial palace. 

I have said that Alcuin's views of education were 
of a narrow and monastic character. This statement 
has, however, to be slightly qualified. His position — 
at least, in the vigour of his manhood — was more 
nearly allied to that of St. Augustine than to that of 
the "Apostolical Constitutions." In one of his letters 
(quoted by Specht, p. 47) he writes, " The knowledge 
of worldly sciences is not to be despised, since they 
lay the foundation of further study. Therefore 
ought children even of the tenderest age to be 
instructed in grammar and the other disciplines of 
subtle world-wisdom, in order that they may be in a 
position, as on the steps of the ladder, to climb the 
highest peaks of evangelical perfection." In his old 
age, however, he proscribed Virgil. His most distin- 
guished pupil, too, Rabanus Maurus, who did vigorous 
work in educational reform, inherited similar views. 
In his book on the education of the clergy, he 
quotes St. Augustine with full concurrence. In so 
far as ancient studies were to be followed at all, 
they were to be followed only as a propaedeutic to 
the study of the Holy Scriptures. 

The reforms initiated by the great emperor were 
not arrested by Alcuin's death in 804, and his own 
death ten years later. Lewis the Pious, an admirable, 
though unwarlike prince, continued to push forward 
reforms, especially the improvement of the monastic 



CHARLEMAGNE AND THE NINTH CENTORY. 49 

discipline. The Council of Chalons had, in 813, 
enjoined the foundation of additional schools for the 
cultivation of learning and the study of the Scriptures. 
In 817 the Council of Aachen required that only those 
who had taken the monastic vows {oblati) should be 
admitted to the schools within the monastery walls 
{scholcE clausirales), the regular clergy and others 
being confined to the " exterior " schools. The 
episcopal schools also received a great impulse. 
Among the most famous of these were the schools 
of Orleans and Rheims : a certain tradition of learn- 
ing was for long preserved at the latter, and about 
the year 1000 it was, under Gerbert, celebrated. 
But the monastery schools were always the most 
learned, and some of these attained a high reputation. 
The great Abbey of St. Riquier had a library of 230 
volumes. The most famous of the " exterior " schools 
was that afterwards established at Fleury-sur- Loire by 
Charles the Bald in 855. It was attended by laymen. 
Pope John VIII., in a Bull of Sy^, speaks of it in 
complimentary terms. Such was the work done 
under the influence given by Charlemagne. 

Some seem to think that by the constitution 
of the Palace School, and the extension and reform 
of important schools at Bologna, Pavia, and Paris, 
Charles contributed to lay the foundations of the 
university movement three hundred years later. For 
at these schools it became, through imperial influence, 
the custom for laymen to attend who had no inten- 



50 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

t'on of preparing- themselves for ecclesiastical life. 
The revival of secular quadrivial studies at these 
places and the prospect of civil employment made 
education more attractive to the lay adolescent mind. 
They had all the characteristics of " public '' schools. 
Bulaeus considers that Charlemagne had distinctly 
before his mind such schools as had existed in Alex- 
andria and Athens, and subsequently under the Roman 
empire at Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus, and 
which were practically privileged and endowed uni- 
versities. The idea which he aimed at realizing was, 
according to this view, that of a stiuiiiun generale : " not 
that he deprived monks of the licence to teach and 
profess, though he certainly limited it, from a clear 
view that that variety of sciences, human and profane, 
which secular academies require is inconsistent with the 
profession and devotion of ascetics ; and accordingly, 
in conformity to the spirit of their institute, it was 
his wish that the lesser schools should be set up 
or retained in the bishops' palaces and in monasteries, 
while he prescribed the subjects which they were to 
teach. The case was different with the schools 
which are higher and public, and which, instead of 
multiplying, he confined to certain central and cele- 
brated spots, not more than three in his whole 
empire — Paris, Pavia, and Bologna." * I can find no 
evidence that Charles or his advisers had so large an 
aim ; but certainly one of the results of his action, 
* Bulaeus, as quoted by Newman, cap. xiii. of *' Historical Studies." 



CHARLEMAGNE AND THE NINTH CENTURY. 51 

especially his concentration of eminent teachers at 
important centres, might have suggested to others a 
studium generate. 

And we may even say that, had the time been 
propitious, the central schools which Charles endea- 
voured to institute for the study of the whole circle 
of the arts and sciences as then known might have 
developed into universities of the old Hellenic, Roman, 
and Alexandrian type. It is certain, however, that 
such institutions of the higher learning could not, in 
the ninth century, have permanently held their own 
in Europe without large permanent endowments as 
well as a continuance of powerful royal protection. 
These, indeed, are the two conditions of the main- 
tenance of learning in a state — endowments and 
privilege. By "learning" we mean the pursuit of 
knowledge for its own sake, and without reference to 
its value in the economic market. The enthusiasm 
of a few may initiate an institution ; but law, privilege, 
organization, and endowment can alone make it 
endure. We shall in the sequel see that the existence 
of the modern university was made possible, spite of 
the lack of endowments, only by the introduction 
into them of a new idea — the economic. They may 
be said to have produced commodities which mankind 
needed for daily use, and sold them. Charles had 
many communications with the East, and might have 
been influenced, it has been suggested, by the Uni- 
versity of Constantinople. But, as it was nearly half 



52 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

a century after his death that this university was 
refounded by Michael III., we may conclude that at 
the height of Charles's activity it had shared in the 
general decadence of education. 

The efforts of Charlemagne were imitated in 
England, half a century after the emperor's death, 
by Alfred, who died in the first year of the tenth 
century. He himself tells us that he knew no priest 
south of the Thames who understood the meaning of 
the Latin prayers which he used. Nor did England 
stand alone in its ignorance, for though Latin was 
the universal language of the Church, not one priest 
in a thousand in Spain could at that time write a 
simple letter in the Latin tongue. I suppose that the 
term " priests," as used by Alfred, is not intended to 
include monks ; for, notwithstanding the destruction 
caused by the Danish invasions, many Benedictine 
monasteries had continued to be centres of a restricted, 
certainly, but still genuine study of Latin and the 
Scriptures. Very restricted it must have been, if we 
are to believe Alfred himself, who says, " Formerly men 
came hither from foreign lands to seek for instruction ; 
and now, when we desire it, we can only obtain it from 
abroad." * The king himself was a scholar, and the 
father of English prose. He is said to have gone 
to the Benedictine school at Oxford to complete his 

• Green's "Rlst.,"!. 79. 



CHARLEMAGNE AND THE NINTH CENTURY, 53 

studies in dialectic, rhetoric, music, and versification.* 
He also instituted a Palace School, calling to his 
assistance foreign scholars — Grimbold from Nor- 
mandy, and Scotus Erigena who had by this time 
left the Palace School of Charlemagne, to which he 
had succeeded. In his preface to the translation of 
the pastoral of St. Gregory, he urges all his people, 
where circumstances in any way admitted of it, to 
give their children at least the elements of learning. 

Owing to the social state of England and the 
renewed invasions of the Danes, the schools, which 
Alfred stimulated into activity, soon declined. His 
attempted revival was, like that of Charlemagne on 
the Continent, short-lived in its effects ; and we find 
Archbishop Lancfranc in 1089, under the Norman 
rule, issuing decrees for the reorganization of the 
schools, which had fallen into decay — decrees which 
contemplate the instruction of both rich and poor. 

We have been speaking of education in its external 
aspects. Let us now look for a little at the inner 
work of the medieval schools during the centuries 
which we have been passing in review. 

* This, however, is now, I fear, to be regarded as a later inter- 
polation in Asset's "Life of Alfred," in the interests of the antiquity 
of Oxford University. 



54 



MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 



LECTURE IV. 

inner work of christian schools 
(a.d. 450-1100). 

In a previous lecture I called your attention to tlie 
rise of the episcopal schools for the preparation of 
the Christian clergy (first in Alexandria), and pointed 
out that, with the decay and final disappearance of 
the Romano-Hellenic institutions, these schools neces- 
sarily g-rew in importance and in the range of their 
teaching. When these took final shape, the master, 
who was a canon of the cathedral, was called Scholas- 
ticus, and the chancellor of the cathedral exercised, 
speaking generally, a certain supervision over them 
and any other schools for the clergy that might arise 
in the diocese. For many churches had at a later 
period connected with them "foundation" schools, 
which were for the most part also collegiate institu- 
tions. These cathedral or episcopal schools, no less 
than the monastery schools, received a powerful 
impulse from the activity of Charles and Lewis. 
Orleans, indeed, was so famous that, three hundred 



INNER WORK OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 55 

years after, it grew into a university of law ; and 
had it not been for the more favourable conditions, 
political and geographical, of Paris, we should pro- 
bably have had to look back to a university of Rheims 
as the mother of European universities. 

The monastic schools, however, from the time of 
Cassian onwards, always took the lead in education. 
Speaking generally, the episcopal schools occupied a 
lower place. 

In reviewing the instruction given at these schools, 
it may be desirable, for greater clearness, to adopt the 
modem division of education into Primary, Secondary, 
and Higher. 

Primary Instruction. 

Instruction began about the age of seven. The 
alphabet, written on tables or leaves, was learned by 
heart by the children, then syllables and words. The 
first reading-book was the Latin psalter, and this 
was read again and again until it could be said by 
heart, and any failure on the part of choir-boys to 
recite or sing accurately was severely punished. The 
psalter was read and learned by heart, at first without 
being understood ; and numerous priests, and even 
monks, were content all their lives with the mere 
sound of the Latin words, which they could both 
read and recite, but did not understand. 

Writing followed reading. There were two stages. 
In the first, the boys were taught to write with a style 



56 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

on wax-covered tablets, imitating copies set by the 
master ; and in the second, or advanced stage, they 
learned to write with pen and ink on parchment — an 
accomplishment highly prized in days when books 
were multiplied by hand-copying. 

Singing of the Church services was also taught 
to all the boys, and great importance was attached 
to this, especially after the time of Charlemagne, who 
introduced the Gregorian chants north of the Alps. 
The elements of arithmetic were also taught, but 
merely with a view to the calculation of Church days 
and festivals. 

Latin was begun very early (apparently imme- 
diately after the psalter was known), with the learning 
by heart of declensions and conjugations and hsts of 
vocables. The rule was to use Latin in the school 
in conversing. But it is quite clear, from the known 
ignorance of the clergy, that this was not always done. 
Probably it was attempted only in the " inner " 
claustral schools. It is specially noted of the school 
which stood among the highest in reputation — that 
of St, Galle — that all, save some inferior boys, spoke 
Latin with each other in the school. In the eleventh 
century, if not earlier, Latin conversation-books, 
having reference to the ordinary events of life, were 
not only read, but, like everything else, learned by 
heart. The merest elements, however, of Latin were 
alone taught, except in the case of monks. 



INNER WORK OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS, 57 

Secondary Instruction. 

The higher instruction geiierally aimed at giving 
the pupil a knowledge of the seven liberal arts — the 
trivium and quadrivium of the Romano-Hellenic 
schools. Compcndiums were written and learnt ; 
these, however, were very often so dry and brief, that 
the pupil knew nothing more than the name and 
contents of the Arts studies. The instruction v/as 
arranged in the form of question and answer. 

But during the years devoted to what we now call 
secondary instruction, the time of the student was 
devoted mainly to the Latin language. Grammar 
was regarded as the basis of all other studies. In 
the court of Charlemagne there was a much-admired 
painting, which represented the seven liberal arts, and 
in which Grammar was represented as the queen, 
sitting under the tree of knowledge with a crown on 
her head, a knife in her right hand with which to 
scratch out errors, and a thong in her left. The 
thong was supposed to symbolize the supremacy of 
grammar in the schools ; it may, however, have 
symbolized the discipline of the time. That grammar 
— which was defined as the art of explaining poets and 
historians, and of speaking and writing correctly — 
should occupy the greater part of the student's time 
was to be expected, as Latin was to all a foreign 
tongue, w^ich they were expected to make completely 
their own. The grammars most approved down even 



58 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

to the thirteenth century were those of Donatus and 
Priscian — the book first used being the Ars Minor, 
written in question and answer by the former writer : 
few went beyond this book. Numerous abridgments 
of Donatus were made, and widely used. The teachers 
had, of course, to explain the meaning of the gram- 
matical rules in the vernacular. Books were scarce, 
and in the majority of cases the teacher alone had a 
copy of the book from which he taught This he 
dictated, and the boys wrote down what he said on 
their waxen tablets, and learnt it by heart with a loud 
voice. Hence the word legere came to be used as 
equivalent to docere. The boys, when they could write 
with pen and ink, transferred what was on their tablets 
to parchment, and so gradually wrote their own text- 
book. The more advanced studied prosody. 

The youths then (at least after the eleventh 
century, if not before) wrote down and learned by 
heart the fables of ^sop, and collections of maxims 
and proverbs. After this, Virgil was usually the text- 
book, and was handled in the same style. Christian 
poets such as Juvencus and Sedulius, and, above all, 
Prudentius, were widely read. But even the poets 
were used mainly for grammatical purposes. Ovid 
sometimes found his way into the schools. In some 
of the more celebrated institutions we find, in the 
tenth century, other Roman poets prescribed, and 
even in the eighth century these were r^d in the 
school of York, as we know from Alcuin. 



INNER WORK OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 59 

The master in the earlier stages of the higher 
instruction explained the Latin authors in the ver- 
nacular ; but the more advanced scholars had ex- 
planations given tbem in Latin, and were required 
to show that they understood the author by rendering 
him in Latin prose. The main object always kept 
in view was a practical command of the Latin tongue 
— not literature or art. Vocabularies of the less 
common words were introduced as the boys advanced. 
It was not in all schools, but only in the more ad- 
vanced, and especially those under the influence of 
the Irish or Scots school of monks, that such authors 
as Virgil were tolerated. 

In the eighth and ninth centuries we find mention 
made of Greek, but there is no evidence that any 
but the most elementary knowledge of this language 
was possessed, except by a monk here and there. 
In the Irish monasteries more attention was paid to 
Greek, especially in the fifth and sixth centuries. 
Quotations from Greek authors are no evidence of 
a knowledge of Greek. These were generally to be 
found in some of the Fathers, from whom they were 
appropriated. Even Scotus Erigena's knowledge of 
Greek was very limited. His knowledge of Plato 
was apparently chiefly obtained from such Latin 
translations as existed. 

Written exercises (called dictamina) were regularly 
shown up in both prose and verse in the more ad- 
vanced classes. A good metrical exercise seems to 



6o MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

have been regarded in the more learned schools as 
the highest kind of linguistic accomplishment. 

Rhetoric, to which so much importance was at- 
tached in the Romano-Hellenic schools, received little 
or no attention. In so far as it was studied, it was 
taught by means of such of Cicero's writings as were 
known, especially "Rhetorica ad Herennium." The 
writing of letters and public docum.ents in good form 
was, however, practised and reduced to a system. 
Young ecclesiastics looked forward to employment 
as secretaries at royal courts and in noble houses, and 
hence the attention paid to the teaching of corre- 
spondence. In a letter of importance, the following 
order of composition had to be observed, viz. Saliitatio; 
Cap tat to ; Benevolentia ; Narratio ; Petitio ; Coiicliisio. 

There were, of course, among the monks, as among 
teachers now, some who had a larger conception of 
their work than others. John of Salisbury, in giving 
an account of the teaching of a distinguished monk 
of the beginning of the twelfth century — Bernard de 
Chartres— tells us that he accustomed his pupils to 
apply the rules of grammar to the texts they read, 
that he directed their attention to delicacies of lan- 
guage and beauty of expression, to the aptness of 
terms and metaphors, and the disposition of the argu- 
ment. He criticized the varieties of style of different 
authors, and took advantage of allusions to give much 
collateral instruction. He also exercised his pupils 
daily in writing Latin prose and verse, and required 



INNER WORK OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS, 6i 

them to learn fine passages by heart. This, it will be 
seen, was applied rhetoric as well as grammar, and 
indeed constitutes what we now understand by 
training in the humanities. No doubt this was an 
exceptional school, and it existed after the uni- 
versity movement had begun. It is certain that 
no better teaching than this of Bernard flourished 
in the baccalaurean classes of the universities either 
in the twelfth or any succeeding century until the 
revival of letters, if even then. 

The study of law, the Theodosian Code — 
especially after the seventh century — and of such 
canon law as had grown up, was prosecuted in 
some monasteries. Ecclesiastics, as I have stated, 
were employed at courts, and in the houses of the 
nobility, as secretaries and notaries, and it was worth 
while for those who had a leaningr towards leeal 
studies to prepare themselves for such offices. 

Higher Instruction. 

The elements of logic were sometimes taught in 
the secondary or trivial course, but, practically, 
under the name of dialectic, logic was a quadrivial 
study. Dialectic was taught out of the books 
which I have named in a previous lecture as the 
great repertories of the higher instruction in the 
Middle Ages, viz. Cassiodorus, Isidorus, Martianus 
Capella, and Boethius. Latin versions of the Cate- 
gories and Porphyry's Introduction formed the utmost 



62 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

range of the study, so far as it was Aristotelian, until 
the twelfth century. Alcuin's "Compendium of Logic" 
gives the course of instruction in the best schools. 
In the eleventh century, dialectic began to receive 
more attention, especially at the great school of 
Rheims, and logical disputations began to be prac- 
tised among the pupils. Complaints, indeed, were 
made by some that dialectic regarding Scripture was 
in more repute than the words of Scripture itself. 

The traditionary quadrivium — arithmetic, geo- 
metry, music, and astronomy — were regarded, in the 
Middle Ages, as being all branches of mathematics.* 
Ordinary calculation, as I have stated, was taught 
in the elementary stage of education. The arithmetic 
and astronomy of the most advanced was, as a rule, 
only such a knowledge of both as enabled the scholar 
to calculate Easter and the other festival days of 
the Church. The more capable, however, studied 
arithmetic as that is contained in the treatise of 
Boethius (" Institutio Arithmetica "). The want of 
the Arabic numerals made arithmetic no easy task 
for the pupil. 

Astronomy consisted in a knowledge of the names 
and courses of the stars, constellations, etc. 

Music in the quadrivial course exhausted all that 
was known on the subject, and the range of study 
may be seen in "Boethius de Musica," the great 
authority for a thousand years. There is a sentence 

♦ Rabanus Maurus, as quoted by Specht, p. 127. 



INNER WORK OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 63 

in Boethius which anticipates the modern physics of 
sound. 

The geometry and mensuration taught was very 
elementary until the twelfth century. The furthest 
range of the study did not exceed four books of 
Euclid, and it might rather be called geography, as 
contained in the sixth book of the encyclopaedia of 
Martianus Capella. In a few schools it embraced all 
that was known of the physical features of the earth, 
of races of men, and of natural history. 

All these studies had in view one object, the 
proper understanding of Holy Scripture. The study 
of the Scriptures themselves, and of such of the 
Fathers as could be got (or extracts from them), 
was the governing subject in the whole scholastic 
system. Every study was estimated by its bearing 
on the Bible, and limited by the needs of the 
theologian. 

It is not to be supposed that-quadrivial studies 
were much pursued. It would be a mistake to 
conclude that even trivial studies were prosecuted in 
the Romano-Hellenic sense. Speaking of Cambridge 
at so late a period as the first decades of the twelfth 
century, Mr. Mullinger sums up the work of the 
school there as composed of the elements of Priscian 
or Donatus, and the reading of some portions of 
Terence, Boethius, and Orosius ; and, so far as I can 
see, this meagre diet was the usual curriculum of 
schools up to the rise of universities. The much 
7 



64 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

and deservedly lauded course of instruction given 
by Gerbert at Rheims, about looo A.D., seems to 
have been simply a full and extended trivium. The 
course was as follows : First, dialectic, including 
translations of the " Isagoge " of Porphyry, and 
Aristotle on the Predicaments ; " De Interpretatione ; " 
Cicero's "Topics," and Boethius on the same subject ; 
and, finally, the doctrine of the syllogism. Before 
going to rhetoric Gerbert read Virgil, Statius, Terence, 
Juvenal, Persius, Horace, and Lucan, and, thereafter, 
introduced his students to rhetoric. A curriculum 
so full as this is recorded because it was quite ex- 
ceptional, as was the man who gave it. 

Speaking generally, the course of instruction 
which I have sketched above is to be regarded as 
the ideal course, here and there, and at different times, 
realized in one department of knowledge or another. 
I doubt if it would be possible to name one school, 
save, perhaps, that of St. Galle, where the full 
curriculum actually existed. There was, however, an 
approximation to it, but this of a fluctuating character, 
at other centres, such as Fulda, Lerins, Orleans, 
Rheims, Canterbury, and York. It was at Galle 
chiefly that Greek was studied, and those who devoted 
themselves to the language went by the name of 
fratres Hellenici. 

It was customary for youths who had exhausted 
the instruction given at their own monasteries, to 
resort to the few more learned centres. Perhaps the 



INNER WORK OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 65 

most important of these in England in the eighth 
and ninth centuries was York. We have it on 
Alcuin's authority that the Hbrary there contained 
the works of Aristotle, Pliny, Cicero, Virgil, Statius, 
and Lucan, and he himself frequently quotes from 
these authors, and from Ovid, Horace, and Terence. 
But the expression " works " does not necessarily 
mean all the works. 

The only institution which for a time was rather 
aristocratic in its character was that of Tours. 
It is not an exaggeration to say, that both in the 
exterior monastic and the episcopal schools the sons 
of serfs and nobles might often be found sitting side 
by side. 

I have already referred more than once to the great 
text-books of the Middle Ages — the writings of Capella, 
Boethius, and Isidore. As a matter of fact, they were 
not text-books, but authorities — consulted by many, 
read by few even of the best e-ducated. I think a 
more detailed account of these authors than is usually 
given will help to give clearer notions of the range of 
mediaeval knowledge. 

Martianus Capella. — This book, if we deduct 
the space occupied by notes, covers three hundred 
pages i2mo, in the edition before me.* It consists 
of eight books, but goes generally by a name strictly 
applicable only to the two first books, viz. " De Nuptiis 
Philologiae et Mercurii." It is interspersed with verses, 

* Edition by Eyssenhardt, 1866. 



66 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

and Boethlus is supposed to have imitated its structure 
in his "De Consolatione Philosophiae." The first two 
books are an allegory, and may be supposed to have a 
deeper meaning than appears on the surface. Mercury 
wishes to marry, and selects Wisdom as his bride ; but 
she having resolved to remain, like her sister Minerva, 
a virgin, he addresses himself next to Psycha, the 
soul, daughter of Entelechy and the sun ; but Virtue 
informs him that the soul is already enchained by the 
bonds of Cupid. He consults Apollo, who recom- 
mends him to marry Philology, the daughter of Erudi- 
tion. As Philology is of terrestrial origin, it is neces- 
sary to obtain the sanction of Jove to the misalliance ; 
which being obtained, the Muses and the Graces, in 
the second book, celebrate the union — which is duly 
completed in the Milky Way in presence of Jupiter. 
The seven liberal arts treated of by the seven 
bridesmaids form the subjects of the succeeding 
books, the third treating of the grammatic art, the 
fourth of the dialectic, the fifth of the rhetorical, 
the sixth of geometry, the seventh of arithmetic, 
the eighth of astronomy, the ninth of music. There 
is a great deal of ingenuity in the book, and some 
speculative power. The style is forced, fanciful, and 
turgid. Capella died probably at the beginning of 
the sixth century. 

The book by which Boethius is best known is his 
*' De Consolatione Philosophiae," written in the prison 
to which Theodoric had sent him. He is a pagan 



INNER WORK OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 67 

philosopher, with a tincture of Christian ideas. Omit- 
ting the treatises which are doubtful, his works, in 
addition to the " De Consolatione," consist chiefly of 
translations of Aristotle, and commentaries on the 
" Topics " of Cicero. He translates the " Prior and 
Posterior Analytics," the " Topics," and the " So- 
phistici Elenchi." He also writes an introduction 
to categorical syllogisms, and other logical treatises. 
Had the whole of Boethius' works been in the hands 
of the teachers of the Middle Ages, the course of 
higher instruction would have been, or at least might 
have been, of a very solid character. It was only 
through what had survived of Boethius that Aristotle 
was known at all. He was executed in 525. 

The twenty books of Etymologise by Isidore of 
Seville (died 636) is, I suppose, the first encyclo- 
paedia. The first book treats of the seven liberal 
arts ; the second is devoted to rhetoric, the third 
to arithmetic. The remaining books take a wide 
and encyclopaedic range, and embrace medicine, 
geography, Biblical criticism. Church history, laws, 
languages, a Latin lexicon, a treatise on man, on 
natural phenomena, agriculture, mineralogy, etc. 
They constitute a valuable record of the state 
of knowledge at the beginning of the seventh 
century. 

Organization and Discipline. — There were two 
schools and two classes of pupils in the monasteries 



68 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

— the inner, or claustral school, in which the boys 
who were devoted by their parents to a monkish Hfe 
{oblati) were taught, and the outer school, frequented 
chiefly by those intending to fill the office of parochial 
priest, or preparing themselves for secular appoint- 
ments. These outer schools were also attended by 
some for education solely, without ulterior reference 
to any specific ecclesiastical or secular function. The 
cathedral schools were less exclusive in their character, 
and the Church funds were used for their maintenance. 

In the inner schools the oblati (after the time of 
Charlemagne kept apart) were maintained, as well 
as educated, gratuitously ; in the outer schools, pupils 
had to pay for their maintenance, but not for their 
instruction. At the same time, the giving of presents 
was largely encouraged, especially when the boys left. 
These presents, often of great value, went sometimes 
to the funds of the school, at other times as tips into 
the pockets of the master (as till recently, I under- 
stand, at Eton !). 

For the poor in the outer school, the monasteries 
themselves often made provision. Land was also 
frequently bequeathed for this specific purpose, and 
even alms asked. Hence the origin of the foundations 
attached to cathedrals and monasteries, and afterwards 
to universities. 

The arrangements of the cathedral (episcopal, 
canonical) schools were similar to those of the ex- 
terior monastery schools, at least after the reforms of 



INNER WORK OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 69 

Chrodegang ; but, after the tenth century, they were 
not so strict. Where the cathedral foundations could 
not maintain the scholars — called scolares canonici — 
their parents or friends contributed. Among the 
pupils were also to be found the sons of well-to-do 
citizens, who paid for their own maintenance and 
instruction. The children of the very poor were fre- 
quently, but by no means always, maintained and 
educated free of cost, their destination being the 
parochial priesthood or the Church choir. This was 
especially the case after the third Lateran Council 
of 1 179. Money was often left by pious persons for 
the education of poor scholars at the cathedral schools. 
But it would appear that such "poor" scholars as 
were not on the original foundation were often taught 
separately from the scolares canonici and those who 
paid. They were of a much lower social class. Even 
these canonici had constantly to pay a portion of the 
cost of maintenance and education. In this respect 
the cathedral schools were not so liberal as the ex- 
terior monastery schools, doubtless because they had 
not such large possessions. 

The head, of the cathedral school was called 
Scholasticus, or Capiscolus {Caput scholce), although 
the designations magister sc/iolarum, archi-magister^ 
and didascalus were also in use. After the twelfth 
century, if not earlier, the scholasticus took pre- 
cedence of the other canons after the dean. He 
seems also, sometimes, to have had a certain super- 



70 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

vision of other Church and foundation schools in 
the diocese — a function in most places and in earlier 
time discharged by the chancellor, and more rarely 
by the archdeacon. From the central cathedral 
school these other subordinate schools obtained their 
teachers, and no one could act as teacher in any 
of the schools of the diocese (at least from the tenth 
century onwards) without receiving from the cathedral 
scholasticus or the chancellor a facultas, or licencia^ 
docendi. Often he had to pay a fee for this. 

The monastery schools were of the nature of 
boarding-schools, and held under strict ecclesiastical 
discipline. Monks were set apart to be with the boys 
day and night in order to watch and direct their 
conduct. This personal supervision was particularly 
close in the interior school, and in the best-organized 
monasteries almost every action of the oblati was 
under fixed regulation. Thus was produced in the 
course of years a class of men entirely devoted to one 
idea, and each like the other. Perfect uniformity of 
appearance and demeanour was the result. 

The discipline in all the schools was exceedingly 
severe. The slightest faults were punished with the 
rod. Degere sub virga meant " to receive education." 
The severity was no doubt encouraged by the theory 
that the devil was in the hearts of boys, and could be 
got out only by flogging. In many monasteries all 
the boys were periodically flogged as ^ kind of genera^ 
atonement for sins past and possible. Even so late 



INNER WORK OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 71 

as the fourteenth century we find that the ceremony 
of introducing a schoolmaster to his office (incepting 
in grammar) was presenting him with a palmer 
(ferule) and rod, and requiring him to flog a boy 
publicly. "Then shall the Bedell purvay for every 
master in Gramer a shrewde boy whom the master 
in Gramer shall bete openlye in the Scolys and the 
master in Gramer shall give the boy a Grote for hys 
labour and another Grote to him that provydeth the 
rode and the palmer," etc.* 

This lofty conception of the scholastic function 
still survives in many quarters. The earliest protest 
against it, after Quintilian, known to me is that 
of the eminent Anselm. " No teacher," says Green 
(p. 69), "has ever thrown a greater spirit of love 
into his toil." " * Force your scholars to improve ! ' he 
burst out to a teacher who relied on blows and com- 
pulsion. * Did you ever see a craftsman fashion a 
fair image out of a golden plate by blows alone ? 
Does he not now gently press it and strike it with his 
tools, now with wise art, yet more gently, raise and 
shape it } What do your scholars turn into under 
this ceaseless beating.?' 'They turn only brutal,' 
was the reply. *You have bad luck,' was the keen 
answer, 'in a training that only turns men into 
beasts'" (Green, i. 137). 

It is necessary to exaggerate the work done in 
education from the third to the twelfth century, as 

* Quoted by Mullinger, i. 345. 



72 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES 

Newman does, if we are to admire the zeal and 
learning of the Church. Except at certain happy 
periods and certain centres, the instruction was inade- 
quate, crude, bald, and unenlightened. On the other 
hand, the man who, looking back on those times, 
would blame the Church, has a churlish and narrow 
soul. I doubt if more could have been accomplished. 
Great sacrifices were made by those who, from genera- 
tion to generation, led the education of the time. 
The zeal displayed for the transcribing of manu- 
scripts, and for providing copies for transcription 
from distant parts, is in truth sometimes very 
touching. The scriptorium, where a part of every 
day was spent in transcribing, was as essential a 
part of the monastery buildings as the refectory or 
the chapel. " In every monastery," says Monta- 
lembert (vi. 136), "there was established first a 
library, then great studios, where, to increase the 
number of books, skilful caligraphers transcribed 
manuscripts ; and, finally, schools open to all those 
who had need of or desire for instruction." Mabillon 
(ii. 38) describes the Abbey of Lerins " as an academy 
of virtue and learning open to all the world." The 
monastic life was, in truth, not merely a religious 
life, but in numerous cases an academic life, and 
has its modern counterpart in the Colleges of Oxford 
and Cambridge. 

Even women shared in such learning as existed. 
Female learning wag carried into Germany by 



INNER WORK OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS, 73 

English ladies, who were said to be well versed in all 
the liberal arts.* We find the names of Chunihilt 
with her daughter Berhtgit, and Tekla mentioned 
with honour as founders of convents, which were 
places of education for girls as well as of religious 
retirement. The pupils of Lioba who taught at 
Bischofsheim were largely in request as teachers 
elsewhere.! A " religious " convent life may be almost 
said to have been also, when the nuns chose to make 
it so, an academic life. One of the most interesting 
literary names in the tenth century was that of 
Hrosv/ilda (Hrosvita), who, in the German convent 
of Gandersheim, wrote dramas, recently published, 
and said to be of considerable merit. 

Pure literature, as we understand it, was regarded 
as the production of the unconsecrated mind, was 
a snare, and was practically (save in a i^v^ cases) 
unknown. What we call humanism and the humani- 
ties could not live side by side with that which was 
alone necessary to salvation. As to science : even . 
if the time had been otherwise ripe, science was 
impossible, because it means free investigation; phi- 
losophy was impossible, because it means unfettered 
thought. The day was approaching when the specu- 
lative mind, in its desire to rationalize theology, was 
to stir metaphysical questions, and, through the im- 
pulse to freedom thus given to the human mind, to 

♦ Mab. Act. S. S., iii. 2. 227, quoted by Specht. 
t Specht, p. 1 1, with relative authorities. 



74 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

open it to the beauties of literature and so prepare 
the way for science. It is to Berengar, Archdeacon 
of Tours in the first half of the eleventh century, and 
the learned head of the Carolingian school there, that 
the stirring of these questions was largely due. He 
(like Scotus Erigena) maintained the rights of reason 
against the authority of the Fathers, and held what 
are now called evangelical and Protestant views of 
the Eucharist. 



LECTURE V. 

TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES. 

AlcUIN had left behind him at the palace of Charles 
two faithful pupils ; but two years after his withdrawal 
to Tours, Clement of Ireland, to whom the legend 
I quoted in Lecture III. referred, was installed as 
chief. The freer and more speculative theology of 
the Irish Church was represented by him. The 
appointment of John Scotus Erigena to the Palace 
School under Charles the Bald was a further step in 
the same liberal direction, and may be said even 
to mark an epoch in the intellectual history of the 
Middle Ages. Under the influence of Martianus 
Capella, Plato, the Pseudo-Dionysius, and the Greek 
Fathers, John started questions which alarmed Western 
orthodoxy, and which led gradually to the more formal 
teaching of Christianity as a dogmatic system resting 
on the Fathers and the decrees of councils. This 
teaching, in the course of the eleventh century, became 
centred in Paris, partly, doubtless, owing to the trans- 
ference of the royal seat of the Capets to that city. 
It was represented in 1109 by William of Champeaux, 



76 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

the greatest orthodox teacher of theology who had yet 
appeared, and whom we shall soon meet again. 

The Carolingian revival had certainly accom- 
plished a good deal. It left its mark. But, after all, the 
permanent results were not great. Whether we look 
at the three centuries that preceded it, or the two 
hundred and fifty years that followed it, we do not 
find much that can be called learning, we find nothing 
that can be called literature. Spite of the labours of 
Alcuin and of Theodulf, the decrees of episcopal 
councils and edicts of kings, we are told by Lupus 
Servatus (Loup de Ferrieres) — the favourite of Louis 
le Debonnaire and Charles the Bald — that the study 
of letters was in his time almost null.* Lupus died in 
870. This failure was doubtless largely due to the 
Norman and Saracen incursions, the former beginning 
within about thirty years of Charlemagne's death. In 
the same way the return of the Danes and other causes 
operated against learning in England. In Hallam's 
opinion, from the sixth to the middle of the eleventh 
century only two names are worthy of mention, viz. 
Scotus Erigena and Pope Sylvester II. (Gerbert, who 
died 1003). He rightly regards Alcuin as a man of 
moderate endowments. I think we ought to add to 
Hallam's brief list the names of Bede the Venerable, 
who died in 735, and Rabanus Maurus (Alcuin's pupil), 
whom I am disposed to regard as a man of consider- 
able original genius as well as of great learning. 

* Compayre, " Hist, da Ped.," p. 55. 



TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES. 77 

But while it is true that there were only two or 
three great literary names during the period men- 
tioned, it is not a correct inference from this that there 
was absolutely no learning. Not to speak of the 
Irish monks and the other scholars whom we have 
had to name, such as Theodulf and Eginhard, and 
the patient and secluded learning of the greater 
monasteries and abbeys, such as St. Riquier, St. 
Galle, Fulda, and the famous schools of Orleans and 
Rheims and, later, of Paris, we have to remember 
that the Benedictines everywhere were teachers and 
to a certain extent students. While steadily accumu- 
lating materials and forming libraries, they maintained, 
with varying fortunes, the tradition of knowledge. 

After all, the early half of the ninth century per- 
haps did more for education, as that word was then 
understood, in proportion to the means and opportu- 
nities available, than any period since. 

Still, we cannot shut our eyes to the rapid falling 
away, and we may say, without exaggeration, that 
the dechne continued till, towards the latter half of 
the eleventh century, literature and learning could 
scarcely be held to exist, in any true sense of 
these words. There is ample evidence that this was 
so. Adalberic, Bishop of Laon, says in the earlier 
part of the eleventh century that *' there was more 
than one bishop who was unable to tell the letters of 
the alphabet on his fingers " (Compayre). And even 
if we suppose this to refer to what might be called 



78 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

" military " bishops, the sentence of ignorance is none 
the less conclusive, and shows how very restricted 
was the range of influence of the schools that still 
flourished at York, Pavia, Orleans, Paris, and Rheims. 
The noble example of Charlemagne and Alfred had 
not called forth imitators, if we except Charles's 
immediate descendants. King, baron, and knight 
had a contempt for those, who professed even an 
elementary knowledge of letters. In the monasteries 
themselves the thread of learned tradition had be- 
come very thin — indeed scarcely discernible, save at 
the few celebrated centres which I have already 
named. 

Eminent names there certainly were, even after the 
death of Theodulf and Eginhard — such as Rabanus 
Maurus, the pupil of Alcuin ; Lupus Servatus of 
Ferrieres, to whom I have already referred ; Otho, 
called to be Archbishop of Cologne in 953 ; and 
Othlonus, of the monastery of St. Emmeran (Ratis- 
bon). The last named refers to his early studies in 
Plato and Aristotle, as well as in Virgil, Lucan, and 
Cicero. But a few scholarly bishops and abbots will 
not save the intellectual reputation of centuries. Even 
Cardinal Newman himself quotes, " To pass from 
grammar to rhetoric, and then in course to the other 
liberal sciences," says Lupus, speaking of France, " is 
fabiila tantitmr Again, "It has ever been the custom 
in Italy," says Glaber Radulphus, writing of the year 
1000, " to neglect all arts but grammar." True, 



TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES. 79 

Newman reminds us that grammar meant also litera- 
ture ; but this was not always, or even generally, the 
case. As a matter of fact, the few who affected classi- 
cal studies found themselves at war with the spirit 
of the age and the teaching of the Catholic Church. 
It is related, for example, that a priest on his death- 
bed saw in a vision Archbishop Bruno brought before 
the judgment-seat of God to answer for his vain and 
useless occupation with the writings of heathens. 
He had to thank St. Paul for intervening and securing 
him a place in heaven ; but under the saints.* Abbot 
Odo of Cluny (922-942) compared Virgil to a beauti- 
ful vessel full of vipers, and Majolus, the fourth abbot, 
forbade him to be read in the cloister school (964- 
994). Again, it is related, in commendation of the 
liberal mind of Sigulf, one of Alcuin's pupils, that he 
permitted Virgil to be read at Ferrieres.f Even the 
humane Anselm in the middle of the eleventh century 
has to advise the study of Virgil -and other profane 
authors. % 

But we are not to suppose that during all this 
period the hearts and intellects of men were not busy. 
Theological questions engaged the leaders of the 
Church, great political and social movements pre- 
occupied men's minds. The Normans were invading 
Europe, the Danes were descending on England, 
the Saracens were threatening all Christendom, and 

* Thietmari Chrome, quoted by Specht. 
t Cre^der, i. p. 63, edit. 1761. % I. Ep., 55 (Mabillcn). 

8 



8o MEDIALVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

society was fighting for its life. Notwithstanding 
the savage struggle, Europe was being slowly pene- 
trated by Christian ideas. The self-sacriiice of the 
religious orders kept steadily before men's minds 
the fact that the spirit lives by the spirit, and that the 
things of earth are not to be compared with the things 
that are eternal ; and many men of noble birth and 
great possessions, to whom a conspicuous secular 
career was open, sought refuge in the monkish cowl, 
and a life in community. 

It is to this slow dissemination of Christian ideas 
that Guizot refers in his fifth lecture on the " History 
of Civilization," and, taking us quite to the last years 
of the period of which I am speaking, illustrates his 
argument by the autobiography of Guibert de Nogent. 
He says — 

" Guibert de Nogent gives an account in this work 
both of the public events at which he was present, and 
of the personal events which passed within his own 
family. He was born in 1053, in a castle of Beauvaisis. 
Let us see how he speaks of his mother, and of his 
relations with her. Call to mind the narrative, or 
rather the language (for narrative is entirely wanting), 
of writers contemporaneous with Charlemagne, Louis 
le Debonnaire, and Charles le Chauve, on a similar 
matter, and say if this is the same condition of 
relations and of souls. * I have said, God of mercy 
and holiness, that I would return thanks to Thee for 
Thy goodness. First, I especially return thanks to 



TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES. %\ 

Thee for having given me a chaste and modest 
mother, and one filled with fear of Thee. With 
regard to her beauty, I should praise it in a worldly 
and extravagant manner, did I place it anywhere but 
in a face armed with a severe chastity. ... The 
virtuous expression of my mother, her rare speech, 
her always tranquil countenance, were not made to 
encourage the levity of those who beheld her . . . 
and what is very rarely, or scarcely ever seen in 
women of a high rank, she was as jealous of pre- 
serving pure the gifts of God, as she was reserved in 
blaming women who abused them ; and when it 
happened that a woman, whether within or without 
her house, became the object of a censure of this kind, 
she abstained from taking part in it ; she was afflicted 
at hearing it, just as if the censure had fallen on her- 
self. ... It was far less from experience than from a 
kind of awe with which she was inspired from above, 
that she was accustomed to detest sin ; and, as she 
often said to me, she had so penetrated her soul with 
the fear of sudden death, that, arrived at a more 
advanced age, she bitterly regretted no longer ex- 
periencing in her aged heart those same stings of 
pious terror which she had felt in her age of simplicity 
and ignorance ! 

" * The eighth month of my birth had scarcely 
elapsed, when my father in the flesh died ; . . . although 
my mother was still fair and of fresh age, she resolved 
to remain a widow, and how great was the firmness 



82 MEDUEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

which she used to accomplish this vow ! How great 
were the examples of modesty which she gave ! . . . 
Living in great fear of the Lord, and with an equal 
love for her neighbours, especially those who were 
poor, she managed us prudently, us and our property. 
. . . Her mouth was so accustomed to continually repeat 
the name of her dead husband, that it seemed as if 
her soul had never any other thought ; for, whether 
in praying or distributing alms, even in the most 
ordinary acts of life, she continually pronounced the 
name of that man, which showed that her mind was 
always preoccupied with him. In fact, when the 
heart is absorbed in a feeling of love, the tongue forms 
itself in a manner to speak, as it were unconsciously, 
of him who is its object. 

" * My mother brought me up with the most tender 
care. . . . Scarcely had I learned the first elements 
of letters, when, eager to have me instructed, she 
confided me to a master of grammar. . . . There was, 
shortly before this epoch, and even at this time, so 
great a scarcity of masters of grammar, that, so to 
speak, scarce one was to be seen in the country, and 
hardly could they be found in the great towns. . . . 
He to whom my mother resolved to confide me had 
learned grammar in a rather advanced age, and was 
so much the less familiar with this science, as he had 
devoted himself to it at a later period ; but what he 
wanted in knowledge, he made up for in virtue. . . . 
From the time I was placed under his care, he formed 



TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES. 83 

in me such a purity, he so thoroughly eradicated from 
me all the vices which generally accompany youth, 
that he preserved me from the most frequent dangers. 
He alv/ays allowed me to go nowhere except in his 
company, to sleep nowhere but in my mother's house, 
to receive a present from no one without her per- 
mission. He required me to do everything with 
moderation, precision, attention, and exertion. . . . 
While most children of my age ran here and there, 
according to their pleasure, and were allowed from 
time to time the enjoyment of the liberty which 
belongs to them, I, held in continual restraint, muffled 
up like a clerk, looked upon the band of players as if 
I had been a being above them. 

" * Every one, seeing how my master excited me 
to work, hoped at first that such great application 
would sharpen my wits; but this hope soon diminished, 
for my master, altogether unskilful at reciting verses, 
or composing them according to rule, almost every 
day loaded me with a shower of cuffs and blows, 
to force me to know what he himself was unable 
to teach me. . . . Still he showed me so much friend- 
ship, he occupied himself concerning me with so much 
solicitude, he watched so assiduously over my safety, 
that, far from experiencing the fear generally felt 
at that age, I forgot all his severity, and obeyed 
with an inexpressible feeling of love. . . . One 
day, when I had been struck, having neglected my 
work for some hours in the evening, I went and sat 



84 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

myself at my mother's knee, severely bruised, and 
certainly more so than I had deserved. My mother 
having, according to her custom, asked if I had been 
beaten that day, I, in order to avoid accusing my 
master, assured her that I had not. But she, pulling 
aside, whether I would or no, the garment they call 
a shirt, saw my little arms all black, and the skin 
of my shoulders all raised up and swollen by the 
blow of the rod which I had received. At this sight, 
complaining that they treated me with too much 
cruelty at so tender an age, all troubled and beside 
herself, her eyes full of tears, she cried, " I will no 
longer have thee become a priest, nor, in order to 
learn letters, that thou thus endure such treatment." 
But I, at these words, regarding her with all the 
rage of which I was capable, said to her : " I would 
rather die than cease learning letters, and wishing 
to be a priest." * 

" Who can read this account without being struck 
with the prodigious development which, in two cen- 
turies, has been taken by the domestic sentiments, the 
importance attached to children, to their education, 
to all the ties of family ? You might search through 
all the writers of the preceding centuries, and never 
find anything resembling it. We cannot, I repeat, 
give an exact account of the manner in which this 
revolution was accomplished ; we do not follow it 
in its degrees ; but it is incontestable." 

We see, in a record like that just quoted from 



TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES. 85 

Guizot, evidence that the efforts of the Christian 
Church to morahze the minds of the people, had, 
spite of the disturbed social conditions, told power- 
fully on personal and social relations. But, in this the 
middle of the eleventh century, I see no evidence that 
the education (in the usual sense of that term) 
either of people or clergy had made any progress, 
even in the quiet of the monasteries, beyond that 
attained in the generation that immediately followed 
Charlemagne and Alcuin. Indeed, how could it ? 
The spirit of progress can exist only where there 
is a belief in new developments of thought, 7iew 
teachings of science. The stringent dogmatism of the 
Church made this impossible. I do not think the 
authorities had, at that time, much fear of heresy in 
connection with mental activity. It was merely that 
the intellectual asceticism of mediaeval Christianity 
turned instinctively aside from all speculation and 
investigation as superfluous, if not hurtful, to the true 
spiritual life — as a life of faith, obedience, and practice. 
In these days (strangely enough !) a similar attitude 
is assumed by the devotees of physical science ; and 
the parallel is not a forced one. Philosophy and 
letters are simply, nay barely, tolerated in education ; 
language is admitted, but only to a precarious place 
on utilitarian grounds alone. 

We conclude, then, that there was a moral advance 
rather than an intellectual one during the two centuries 
after the death of Charlemagne. At the same time. 



86 MEDIAiVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

through the impulse given by Charles, the mediaeval 
curriculum of instruction was more thoroughly studied 
in a few favoured spots than it had been anywhere 
for centuries except in Ireland, and the England of 
Theodore and Baeda. Especially was this the case 
at Paris, Orleans, and Rheims. It was at the latter 
town that the celebrated Gerbert, of whom I have 
more than once spoken, taught, and we have a record 
of his course of instruction in the " Historiarum 
Ouatuor Libri " of Richerus (bk. iil.), to which I have 
referred in the fourth lecture. 

Among other causes which led to the decline 
of learning, was, without doubt, the expectation that 
the year looo would see the end of all things. Under 
the influence of this expectation, churches and houses 
were allowed to go to ruin, and even the fields were 
left untilled. Why should men concern themselves 
with learning when the dies ircB was so close at 
hand ? 

Not only were those centuries engaged in taking 
to heart the practical teachings of Christianity, but 
in other directions than that of learning there was 
great activity. In the century that saw the deatli 
of Charlemagne, there arose out of feudalism an 
educational force far more potent than the monastic 
schools. This was a secular order, destined to work 
great changes in the political as in the moral world — 
the order of chivalry. The element of personality 



TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES, 87 

and individual merit was so all-powerful in this order, 
that, in this respect, it may be said to have contained 
the germs of reformation ideas. Taking its rise in 
the tenth century, it grew steadily in importance, and 
effloresced in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth. 
These last were also the centuries of intellectual 
revival and the beginning of the universities, and it is 
interesting to note that alongside of this intellectual 
movement we have the assertion of moral freedom 
and personal moral responsibility in the chivalric 
order. Its creed was love of honour, personal 
courage, alone and against odds, truthfulness, an 
abstract love of justice, respect for woman, and 
courtesy. The Teutonic spirit thus illustrating itself 
in Christianity was a civilizing and spiritualizing 
agency of no mean character. This the Church soon 
saw, and it quickly brought chivalry within its own 
organization by consecrating with solemn ceremonies 
the sword of the knight to the defence of the faith. 
As it was an order of personal nobility as distinguished 
from the nobility attached to hereditary possessions, 
a career was thus opened for ardent and ambitious 
youth. At the great castles there arose, in continua- 
tion of the ancient custom of the Germani, what 
might be called baronial schools of gymnastic, of 
military training, courtesy, and honour. Ere long 
singing and playing on stringed instruments were 
also introduced, and even the art of versification was 
cultivated. 



88 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

Let US now turn for a moment from the West to 
the East. During the centuries of which we have 
been speaking (ninth, tenth, and eleventh), when 
Hterature, philosophy, and learning languished in 
Europe, the torch burned brightly among the Arabs 
in the east and south. Under the inspiration of the 
religion of Mohammed, the children of the desert 
carried the Koran and the sword to the Atlantic and 
the Indian Oceans. No sooner did their victorious 
armies establish new states, than the spiritual force 
which the new faith had nursed turned in fresh 
directions : jurisprudence, philosophy, science, and 
art rose and flourished under the liberal sway of 
the Mohammedan princes. Every mosque had its 
school. Numerous academies and universities were 
instituted, while great libraries were collected at 
Bagdad, Alexandria, Cairo, Cordova, and elsewhere. 
The survivals of ancient Greek learning in the 
Eastern schools seem to have powerfully attracted 
the conquerors, and of Greek literature and art they 
soon became ardent students. Translators were 
officially employed. Long before Aristotle was 
expounded in support of Christian dogma, he had 
been turned to a similar use in connection with the 
Mohammedan faith. The great names of Avicenna 
and Averrhoes are only the most prominent among 
a crowd of intellectual men who, in the various fields 
of philosophy, rhetoric, poetry, mathematics, and 
medicine, adorned the Mohammedan courts. It 



TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES. 89 

would seem that it was the translation of Aristotle 
and Euclid into Arabic that formed the starting-point 
of this new literary activity in every department of 
thought save poetry, which was native, and juris- 
prudence, which was largely based on the Koran. 
Christian youths and Christian teachers were made 
welcome at the great schools and libraries of Spain. 
Africa, and the East. George Backtischwah (Bocht 
Jesu, 754). a Nestorian Greek Christian, founded the 
medical science of the Saracens.* Even if it be 
untrue that Gerbert acquired his wide learning at the 
Saracen schools of Spain,t the universal acceptance 
of the story, till recently, is itself suggestive, and is 
part of the history of education. Legends are often 
as instructive and real as facts. 

'* Bagdad," says Sismondi, " was the capital of 
letters as well as of the caliphs ; but Bassorah and 
Cufa almost equalled that city in reputation, and in 
the number of valuable treatises and celebrated poems 
which they produced. Balkh, Ispahan, and Samarcand 
were equally the homes of science. The same 
enthusiasm had been carried by the Arabs beyond 
the frontiers of Asia. Benjamin Tudela, a Jew, 
relates In his * Itinerary ' that he found in Alexandria 
more than twenty schools for the propagation of 
philosophy. Cairo also contained a great number 
of colleges ; and that of Betzuaila, in the suburbs of 

* Sismondi, i. 2. 

t Denied by Olleris in his " Vie de Gerbert." 



90 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

that capital, was so substantially built, that during 
a rebellion it served as a citadel for the army. In 
the towns of Fez and Morocco, likewise, the most 
magnificent buildings were appropriated to the 
purposes of instruction, and these establishments were 
governed by the wisest and most beneficent regu- 
lations. But Spain was, more especially, the seat of 
Arabian learning. It was there that it shone with 
superior brightness and made its most rapid progress 
Cordova, Grenada, and Seville rivalled one another in 
the magnificence of their schools, their colleges, their 
academies, and their libraries." * 

* Cramer, in his " Gesch. d. Erz. in d. Nied.," p. 202,says that the 
annual income of the Cairo university was 250,000 ducats, and that 
the caliphs frequently attended the lectures and disputations. Contract 
all this with the Philistine notions of a British House of Commons. 



LECTURE VL 

RISE OF UNIVERSITIES (A.D. IIOO). 

When we speak of Europe recovering in the twelfth 
century from a long intellectual sleep, our past 
lectures show that this expression is to be used with 
a full recognition of the work done by the Church, 
and not in the absolute sense in which some 
historians, including even Hallam, use it. After the 
Council of Carthage, in which classical literature 
was almost of necessity proscribed, the Church was 
engaged in reorganizing Europe on a spiritual basis ; 
and, in the midst of great difficulties, the work of 
preparing the clergy for their duties and training the 
people in Christian doctrine and practice taxed all its 
energies. 

And yet, it is true that it was a sleep out of 
which Europe arose. After the rough call of John 
Scotus Erigena it turned on its other side. The (so- 
called) heresies of Gotteschalk and Berengar made 
it open its eyes ; but it was not till Roscelin and 
Anselm, boldly following in the track of Scotus — 
a track by that time almost obliterated — asserted 



92 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

the claims of reason and the essential unity of religion 
and philosophy, that the higher intellect of Europe 
was fairly roused to activity. 

Up to the end of the eleventh century the 
Instruction was, speaking generally, and allowing 
for transitory periods of revival, and for a few 
exceptional schools, a shrunken survival of the old 
trivium et quadriviimi. The lessons, when not 
dictated and learnt by heart from notes, were got up 
from bald epitomes. All that was taught, moreover, 
was taught solely with a view to "pious uses." 
Criticism did not exist ; the free spirit of speculation 
could not, of course, exist. The rules of the orders 
inevitably cribbed and confined the minds of the 
learners, old and young. The Independent activity 
of the human mind, if it could be called Independent, 
showed Itself only In chronicles, histories, acta sanc- 
torum, and so forth. This was, doubtless, a necessary 
stage In the historical development of Europe, and it 
is absurd to talk of these ages as "dark ages," by 
way of Imputing blame or remissness to the Catholic 
Church. All that could be done was done by the 
Catholic organizations, and by no other agency. 
The Catholic Church did not prohibit learning If It 
subserved the faith. Opinion was watched certainly, 
but to look with superfluous alarm on possible 
developments of anti-theological speculation did not 
occur to the men of that time, and this is con- 
spicuously shown in the attitude which the popes 



RISE OF UMVERSITIES, 93 

took to universities when they began to arise (iioo- 
II 50). When heresies did show themselves, they 
were, at least at first, met by laboured argument, and 
the suppression of them by councils was, in truth, 
the last act in a series of able disputations — the 
judicial summing up and sentence, so to speak.* 
In brief, the Christian schools were doing their 
proper work for Europe. They did not promote 
learning in any true sense ; but they conserved 
learning, and, what was of more importance, they 
were leavening the life of the people. 

The preceding lectures are, I believe, quite fair 
and accurate, though necessarily brief, surveys of 
mediaeval educational work down to the eleventh 
century. Cardinal Newman, with his subjective and 
idealistic tendencies, sees facts through a brilliant 
halo when he would have us believe that the popes 
and bishops were continually consumed with a 
desire to promote learning. Numerous decrees of 
councils show that they were most anxious to 
improve the education of the clergy, but this only 
in so far as the studies of the schools could sub- 
serve the faith — a restriction fatal to the true life 
of mind and, therefore, to progress. No learning 
which stimulated the human mind to independent 

* I refer to learned and speculative heresy. The suppression of 
heresies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the suppression, 
quite as much, of resistance to the supreme papal jurisdiction simply as 
such. For the heresies of this period, see Milman. 



94 MEDIALVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

activity could possibly be regarded with favour by the 
existing powers. Scotus Erigena was a " suspect ; " 
and all know how, long after, Abelard was perse- 
cuted. Anselm (born 1034) might speculate safely 
because he, like all other sound Churchmen, started 
from unquestioning belief. His object was to 
interpret authority. Credo ttt intelliga^n was the 
legend on the ecclesiastical banner. Scotus Erigena 
had dared to say, "Authority is derived from reason, 
not reason from authority ; and where the former is 
not confirmed by the latter, it is valueless." Had 
Erigena founded a school on this basis, the attitude 
of the Church towards it would have been necessarily 
hostile. But this temporary aberration of thought 
from dogmatic channels was forgotten, and the 
Church welcomed the extension of learning in the 
twelfth century, while, of course, keeping a watchful 
eye on Abelard and his spiritual successors. 

As we approach the period which saw the birth 
of those institutions known as Studia Publica or 
Gencralia, and ere long to be known as " universities," 
we have to extend our vision and recognize the 
circumstances of the time, and those changes in the 
social condition of Europe which made great central 
schools possible — schools to be frequented not merely 
by the young ecclesiastic, but by laymen. 

Among other causes which led to the diffusion of 
a demand for education among the laity, was, I think, 
the institution or reorganization of municipalities, 



RISE OF UNIVERSITIES. 95 

It was about the end of the eleventh century that the 
civic Communes (Communia) began to seek and 
obtain, from royal and other authorities, charters of 
incorporation constituting their internal government 
and conferring certain freedoms and privileges as 
against the encroachment of lay and ecclesiastical 
feudal barons. The municipal movement in Italy 
is too well known to need more than a reference. 
In France, Louis VI. issued (1135) several letters 
of franchise to cities and towns. About the same 
time, and somewhat prior to this, trade guilds had 
been formed in many cities for mutual protection, 
the advancement of commerce, and the internal 
regulation of the various crafts. There immediately 
followed a desire for schools in the more important 
commercial towns. In Italy such schools arose in 
Bologna, Milan, Brescia, and Florence ; and in Ger- 
many they arose in Liibeck, Hamburg, Breslau, 
Nordhausen, Stettin, Leipsic, and Niirnberg. The 
distinctive characteristic of these city schools was,, 
that they do not seem to have been under the direct 
control of the Church, or to have been always taught 
by priests ; further, that the native tongue (German 
or Italian, as the case might be) was taught. Read- 
ing, writing, and a little arithmetic seem to have 
formed the staple of the instruction. The custom 
of dictating, writing down, and then learning by 
heart what was written — universal in the schools 
of the preceding centuries — was, of course, still 
9 



96 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

followed in these burgh schools. This custom was 
almost inevitable. Printing was not yet invented, 
and manuscript books were expensive. But such a 
method of instruction was not without its advantages. 
It exercised the pupils in a practical or imitative way 
in writing, grammar, composition, and spelling, while 
it could not fail to train the memory. 

We may now briefly summarize the status quo 
in (say) the year i lOO, when the university move- 
ment may be said to have originated. The Bene- 
dictine monastery schools and the episcopal and 
foundation schools were prosecuting m an arid spirit 
the old trivium, to the benefits of which the children 
of laymen were certainly admitted, but the main aim 
of which was the training of the priest and the 
monk. Some of these had a high reputation, and 
included the quadrivium in their course ; and many 
monks were skilled in the circle of the sciences in 
their traditionary form. The towns had in many 
parts of Europe started vernacular schools free from 
all ecclesiastical control, the aim of which was limited 
to what we now call primary instruction. The in- 
creased communication with Africa and the East 
through the Crusades had introduced men to a 
standard of learning among the Arabs, unknown in 
Europe. Outside the school, the order of chivalry 
had introduced a new and higher ethical spirit than 
had been known in the previous centuries. Civic 
communities and trade guilds were forming them- 



RISE OF UNIVERSITIES. 97 

selves and seeldng charters of incorporation. Above 
all, the Crusades, by stimulating the ardour and 
exciting the intellects of men, had unsettled old con- 
vention by bringing men of all ranks within the sacred 
circle of a common enthusiasm, and into contact with 
foreign civilizations. 

The desire for a higher education, and the impulse 
to more profound investigation, that characterized the 
beginning and course of the twelfth century, was thus 
only a part of a widespread movement, political and 
moral, which showed itself in the order of chivalry, in 
the Crusades, the rise of free towns, the incorporation 
of civic life, the organization of industries in the form 
of guilds, and, we may also add, as another indication 
of the mental quickening, in the rise of a Provencal 
modern language and literature and of not a {(^\m 
heresies. The universal domination of the Catholic 
Church, too, had by this time created a spiritual 
European commonwealth, and a common language 
which made communication between the citizens of 
different countries possible, and secured the safety 
of travelling clerics — a word of very wide signification, 
and gradually extended to all scholars. The abbeys 
and monasteries had hospitia or hostels, attached to 
them, and travellers moved from one to the other. 
The dress of a monk or the designation of a scholar 
guaranteed protection wherever the Catholic Church 
existed, irrespectively of nationality. The university 
movement, accordingly, was not an isolated move- 



q8 medieval education and universities, 

ment, or due to only one cause. The times were ripe, 
and the general conditions of life made the new- 
development possible. 

Let us further bear in mind that while the 
Romano-Hellenic schools had long disappeared, there 
still existed, in many towns, episcopal schools of a 
high class, many of which might be regarded as 
continuations of the old imperial provincial institu- 
tions, of which I spoke in a former lecture. In 
Bologna and Paris, Rheims and Naples, it was so. 
The arts curriculum professed in these centres was, for 
the time and state of knowledge, good. These schools, 
indeed, had never quite lost the fresh impulse given by 
Charlemagne and his successors. It is essential, 
then, that we keep these schools in view, for, accord- 
ing to my view of educational history, the great sttidia 
piiblica or generalia arose out of them. They were 
themselves, in a narrow sense, already stiidia publica. 

Nor is this all ; for when we look at the more 
important of the schools, such as those of St. Galle, 
Bologna, Paris, Salernum (Monte Cassino), Bee, 
Rheims, Lerins, and Oxford, and realize the fact that, 
already in the eleventh century (and to a certain extent 
before this), these schools, as possessing a high repu- 
tation, were resorted to by the more advanced and 
ambitious students from all quarters, the question. 
What is a university? wherein consists its differentia- 
tion from a first-class Benedictine or cathedral school? 
is not so easy to answer as may at first appear. 



JilSE OF UNIVERSITIES. 99 

At Bee, for example, Anselm (1033-1108) had 
been both student and prior, leaving it for the primacy 
of England. All civilized Europe recognized the 
celebrity of this theological school. Anselm may be 
regarded, along perhaps with Berengar (setting aside 
Erigena, who belonged to a long prior period), as the 
true founder of the speculative theology, which by 
the help of Roscelin, and after him of Abelard, led to 
the University of Paris.* 

Now, looking, first, to the germ out of which the 
universities grew, I think we must say that the 
universities may be regarded as a natural develop- 
ment of the cathedral and monastery schools ; but 
if we seek for an external motive force urging men 
to undertake the more profound and independent 
study of the liberal arts, we can find it only in the 
Saracenic schools of Bagdad, Babylon, Alexandria, 
and Cordova. The Saracens were necessarily brought 
into contact with Greek literature just when the 
Western Church was drifting away from it, and by 
their translations of Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle, 
and other Greek classics, they restored what may be 
quite accurately called the *' university life " of the 
Greeks. Many of their teachers were, of course, 
themselves Greeks, who had conformed to the new 
faith. To these Arab schools Christians had resorted 

* As to the Oxford school, the discredit thrown on the chronicle 
of Ingulphus, Abbot of Croyland, destroys the chief evidence of the 
high character of the work done there at this time. 



lOO MEDIALVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

in considerable numbers, and were cordially welcomed. 
They brought back, especially to Italy, the knowledge 
and the impulse they had gained. This will appear 
more clearly when we come to speak of Salernum, 
which unquestionably led the way. We are right, 
then, I think, in connecting the birth of universities, 
on the one hand, with the cathedral and Benedictine 
schools, of which they were an evolution, and with 
the Saracenic impulse on the other, — the latter being, 
in fact, old Greece at work again through an alien 
channel. Some influence, also, may have come from 
the Greeks of Constantinople through Venice, for in 
the eleventh century there was still a survival of old 
Greek ideas. In the Eastern capital Greek literature 
was still studied, and the Greek tongue written (it 
is said) with classical purity. But the activity of 
thought there, was as nothing when compared with 
that of the Arabs. 

But the cloister and cathedral schools, and the 
Saracenic impulse, would not of themselves have given 
rise to universities. There were other actuating causes, 
and these I consider to have been : (i) The gradual 
growth of traditionary learning, which accumulated so 
great a weight on the subjects that most interest the 
mind of man and are most essential to his welfare as 
a member of society, as to demand specialization, (2) 
The growth of a lay or anti-monastic feeling in 
connection with the work of physician, lawyer, and 
even theologian. (3) The actual specializing of the 



mSE OF UNIVERSITIES. loi 

leading studies — medicine at Salernum, law at 
Bologna, and theology, with its cognate philosophy, 
at Paris. As a matter of course, this specialization 
drew (as it would to-day draw) a vast number of 
students to the noted centres of instruction — both 
those intended for the religious life, whether as priests 
or monks, and those who desired as laymen, and free 
from monastic vows and monastic rule, to mix with 
their fellow-men as professional workers. This, I 
submit, is the chief key to the explanation of the 
rise of the higher or university schools. They were 
specialized schools, as opposed to the schools of 
Arts, and they were open to all without restriction as 
studia pnblica or generalia, as opposed to the more 
restricted ecclesiastical schools which were under a 
" Rule." 

Indeed, in the beginning, and for some time, there 
was too little restriction. The daily life at these centres 
was not only free, but often licentious, and always 
more or less turbulent. They had a powerful attrac- 
tion for the idle as well as for the industrious youth 
of Europe, and life at the great seats of learning vv^as, 
in its way, almost as "jolly " as the Crusades. These 
crusades, moreover, as well as the growth of mercantile 
intercourse, had by this time accustomed men's minds 
to travel and adventure, and the Church protection, as 
I have already pointed out, made travelling much . 
easier than has been commonly supposed. 

Speaking of the University of Paris, Crevier (i. i) 



102 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

says, *' By its essential constitution it is all composed 
of seculars, and in such a way that the regulars whom 
it has been forced to admit have been admitted only 
under conditions and restrictions which hinder them 
from dominating, and which assure to the seculars 
complete pre-eminence." Again, he points out that 
the masters have no superiors, and are accountable 
only to public opinion and the law of the state. There 
was thus not only free living ; there was free teaching 
and free learning. Doubtless the teachers were at 
first ecclesiastics, if not monks and bound by their 
vows ; but they were living out of community, and 
were quickly succeeded by men who were not monks. 
The specialization of studies then, and the growing 
feeling that professional studies might be freely pur- 
sued outside monastic or canonical regulations — the 
growth of a lay feeling, as we may call it — constitute 
the specific, as opposed to the general, forces which 
differentiated the new higher institutions from the 
higher class of cathedral and Benedictine schools. An 
incidental and contributory proof of this lies in the 
great success which attended the specialized schools 
of Salernum, Bologna, and Paris, as compared with 
Oxford (till after the migration from Paris), which 
seems to have retained longer the character of a 
general school of Arts merely. 

Bulaeus makes an attempt to differentiate a 
university from a school or college of Arts, and finds 
that they differ — 



RISE OF UNIVERSITIES. 103 

I Ratione disciplines. That is to say, they teach 
not merely arts, but also law, medicine, and theology. 

2. Ratione loci. They are placed in suitable, healthy, 
and accessible localities. 

3. Ratione fimdatoriim. That is, they are founded 
by popes, emperors, and kings ; whereas colleges and 
trivial and quadrivial schools are founded by lesser 
authorities in Church and State. 

4. Ratione privilegiornrn. A university as such 
cannot exist without special privileges both pecuniary 
and legal. 

5. Ratione regiininis, A college is governed by 
one head ; a university is a respublica litter aria. 

Though all these, except the second, are distinctive 
notes of a complete universitas, historical facts compel 
us to refuse assent to the other characteristics as being 
essential. The first, fourth, and fifth confirm, so far 
as they go, my view as to the characteristics which 
gradually raised a school into a studium generale. 
Whether we are to say the Arts schools developed 
into universities, or that universities, being set on 
foot by the motive forces to which we have referred, 
gradually absorbed the Arts schools, matters little. 
This is certain, that specialized studies always pre- 
sinned some course in arts — the trivium at least — 
and if this were at first obtained outside the uni- 
versitas proper, it very soon became an integral part 
of the university teaching. At Paris and Oxford the 
Arts unquestionably retained their hold from the first, 



I04 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

but the extent to which the new specialized subjects 
tended at one time to overshadow the old is shown by 
the old couplet — 

** Dat Galenus opes, dat Justinianus honores 
Sed genus et species cogitur ire pedes." 

Generally, I would say that the existence of a 
course in arts was always assumed, but the studium 
generale outside this might consist of only one 
specialty, as for long was the case at Montpellier, 
Toulouse, Bologna, etc., etc. The "generale" had 
no reference to the encyclopaedism of the instruction. 
I would briefly define a primary stndhim generale as 
"a privileged higher, specialized, and self-governing 
school open to all the world, free from monastic or 
canonical rule, its privileges including the right of 
promotion." 

I have given in this lecture, briefly, both the 
general and the specific causes which (we may almost 
say) forced the new educational development. In 
treating of individual universities I shall illustrate my 
theory. As regards, further, the form of internal con- 
stitution adopted by the universities, it may be well 
here, for the sake of clearness, to add that I consider 
that the trade guilds of the Middle Ages exercised 
a powerful influence on the character of university 
constitutions, including even their graduation system. 

In dealing with the three primary studia gefteralia, 
it is difficult to determine whether we ought to begin 



JilSE OF UNIVERSITIES. 



105 



with Paris, Bologna, or Salernum. I choose to begin 
with Salernum, because I think there is ample evi- 
dence of specialized instruction and of a collegiate 
constitution there before these characteristics were to 
be found at the other seats of learning which contest 
with Salernum the honour of priority. And I do this 
although I am well aware that Salernum had little 
influence on the history of universities elsewhere. 
Paris and Bologna alone formed the models or types 
of the European system.* 

* Strange to say, Bologna had more influence in France than Paris 
hu-L 

The preceding lecture finds its complement in the lecture oa 
uu versity cousdt>utions. 



io6 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 



LECTURE VII. 

THE FIRST UNIVERSITIES* 

The Schola Salernitana, and the University of Naples. 

To fix precisely the date of the rise of the first 
specialized schools or universities is impossible, for the 
simple reason that they were not founded. Europe 
was at the beginning of a new intellectual movement, 
and had to feel its own way to the forms which 
might best provide a fitting channel. So in Athens 
at the time of the sophists. Their teaching seems 
to have culminated in the rhetorical school of Iso- 
crates,t which, though a private institution, may be 
regarded as containing the germ of the future uni- 
versity both of ancient and modern times. For 
it was attended by youths who had already gone 
through the ordinary schools and were contemplating 
a public life ; and not only by these, but by men who 
afterwards led a purely literary life, such as Theo- 
pompus and Ephorus, and Asclepiades and Theodectes. 

* It is to be understood that I use this term for convenience, while 
fully aware that it was not applied in the ancient world nor to the 
studia generalia of mediseval times for two centuries after they arose. 

t In saying this, I do not forget the purely philosophical schools. 



THE FIRST UNIVERSITIES. 107 

"If the example of Clearchus, the subsequent tyrant 
of Heraclea," says Mr. E. Kirkpatrick,* "may be 
regarded as establishing the rule, the term of study 
occupied four years, and the fee for the entire course 
amounted to a thousand drachmae." We know that 
Isocrates anticipated Quintilian in considering that 
the equipment of the true orator included the study 
of literature and ethics, etc. ; and these were prose- 
cuted in due order in this school. Out of this school 
and that of Plato, the University of Athens, if we may 
use the expression, arose and was followed by others 
{vide Lecture L). But neither to the universities of the 
empire, nor of Byzantium, nor to the Arab schools, 
is there evidence that the European revival of the 
twelfth century owed anything, save the Saracenic 
impulse. There was no "organic unity of succession," 
so far as I can see, although there are many curious 
parallelisms.! The simplest account of the new uni- 
versity origins is the most correct. It would appear 
that certain active-minded men of marked eminence 
began to give instruction in medical subjects at 
Salerno, and in law at Bologna, in a spirit and manner 
not previously attempted, to youths who had left the 
monastery and cathedral schools, and who desired to 
equip themselves for professional life. Pupils flocked 
to them ; and the more able of these students, finding 

* "The University," p. 1 18. (Auth.) Memnon, irepl 'HpaK\eiasi 
MUller, " Fr. Historicorum," ii. 876. 
t I shall speak of this again. 



io8 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

that there was a public demand for this higher 
specialized instruction, remained at head-quarters, and 
themselves became teachers or doctors. 

The Church did not found universities any more 
than it founded the order of chivalry. They were 
founded by a concurrence (not wholly fortuitous) of 
able men who had something they wished to teach, 
and of youths who desired to learn. None the less 
were the acquiescence and protection of Church and 
State necessary in those days for the fostering of these 
infant seminaries. Free, voluntary, self-supporting 
centres of learning, independent of ecclesiastical con- 
trol and of civil direction, they certainly were in their 
beginnings. Free teaching and free learning were in 
the very heart of them. Out of a free spirit they 
arose, and not out of the brain of an ecclesiastic, 
seeking definite ends for the glory of the Church. 
But while this is true, it is not true that the Church 
was indifferent, or that there was no ecclesiastical 
supervision. The astute statesmen who at Rome 
had formed the noble conception of a spiritual empire 
of Europe, in which all men and all nations should 
be equal partakers, and which would transcend the 
petty distinctions of race and nation, had their eyes 
everywhere. They were actuated by no narrow feel- 
ings of jealousy when they saw these centres of free 
learning and free teaching growing up. On the con- 
trary, just as they seized on the order of chivalry 
and sanctified it by turning it to spiritual uses under 



THE FIRST UNIVERSITIES. 109 

the blessing of the Church, so they welcomed the 
rise of the new centres of intellectual activity, and, 
without any idea of controlling, gave them encourage- 
ment and privileges, believing that all learning tended 
to the glory of God and the good of the Church. 

But we are to some extent anticipating. For as 
yet at the close of the eleventh and beginning of the 
twelfth centuries, Salerno, Bologna, and Paris were 
practically in the hands of self-constituted teachers. 
Irnerius, the first great authority in civil law, was 
beginning to lecture at Bologna and gathering crowds 
of students ; at Salerno, some time prior to this, 
medicine was being publicly taught ; and, about the 
sam.e time, philosophical, or what we now call "arts," 
studies were being prosecuted at Paris with a special 
view to theological inquiry and the priestly office. 

Thus not only were the infant universities special- 
ized schools, but their primary purpose, as indeed 
manifestly follows from their specialization, was a 
" professional " one. They had practical ends ; their 
aim was to minister to the immediate needs of society. 
Speculation and the scientific spirit, nay, the Refor- 
mation and the liberties of Europe, arose out of them ; 
but such large issues were not present to the minds 
of the first doctors. They simply aimed at critically 
expounding recognized authorities in the interest of 
social wants. It was the needs of the human body 
which originated Salerno ; it was the needs of men as 
related to each other in a civil organism which origi- 



no MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

nated Bologna; it was the eternal needs of the human 
spirit in its relation to the unseen that originated 
Paris. We may say, then, that it was the improve- 
ment of the professions of medicine, law, and theology 
which led to the inception and organization of the 
first great schools.* 

I am aware that it is usual to regard Paris as pri- 
marily a university of arts. But a closer inspection 
will satisfy the investigator that " arts " were studied 
mainly with a view to the priesthood, and that in so far 
as the school had an " university " character, arts meant 
philosophy, as handmaid and rationalizer of theology. 
The purely philosophical studies (and philosophy then 
meant the study of nature as well as of the mind 
of man) gradually asserted for themselves increasing 
importance, and finally, as we shall in the sequel see, 
led to such differences among the Parisian doctors 
and the mendicant orders that the only solution 
was the separation of the strictly theological from 
the other arts* studies. The former were, for the first 
time, formally constituted a " faculty of theology " so 
late as 1272. 

Of the three great schools which we have named, 
there is sufficient ground for believing that the first to 
reach such a development as to entitle it to the name 
of a studium generale or university was the Schola 

* Towards the end of the eleventh century or beginning of the twelfth, 
medicine was being taught at Montpcllier by Jews who had acquired 
their knowledge at Arab schools. 



SCIIOLA SALERNITANA. in 

Salernifana, although it never was a university, tech- 
nically speaking ; and it is further interesting to note, 
in connection with the study of the physical sciences, 
that the Salernitan school and the University of 
Naples owed their first formal recognition and 
privileges not to the pope, as did other seats of 
learning, but to the civil power. By following its 
early fortunes we shall, I think, learn much as to the 
early growth of universities. 

The Schola Salf.rnitana. 

Let us now, then, look more closely at the rise of 
this Salernitan school and its transformation into an 
university, or at least a recognized limb of the Uni- 
versity of Naples. By so doing we shall see more 
clearly how the " university," as understood in Europe 
for the last six hundred years, gradually came into 
existence. We shall find in the gradual development 
of this medical school confirmation of the general 
historical interpretation, which we have ventured to 
give in the preceding pages; and if we are rightly 
to understand university history we must not grudge 
careful attention to the rise of an institution so 
i2LVCiQ>us—fo7ZS medicince, as Petrarch called it. 

First, we have to note that Benedict established his 
great monastery at Monte Cassino, near Salernum, in 
528 A.D., and that one of the rules of his order was "to 
apply themselves to the study of letters, and in all 
important disciplines to instruct all the members of 
10 



1 1 2 MEDIAE VAL ED UCA TION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

their order"* (including, of course, young aspirants) ; 
but they were not permitted to lecture in public to 
all and sundry.f Among other studies, medicine 
engaged the minds of the monks, and here, as well as 
in monasteries elsewhere, medical monks gave advice 
and medicines gratuitously. The books studied and 
expounded (and transcribed again and again) were 
Hippocrates and Galen. These facts are sufficient to 
establish a direct connection with Greek medicine 
long before the Saracen influence was felt in Europe. 
Indeed, Hippocrates and Galen were translated into 
Latin before A.D. 560. { 

It seems to have been entirely to the Benedictine 
monastery that Salernum owed the first beginnings ot 
its fame. Whether a later writer (Scipio Mozella) 
be correct in his details or not, there can be little 
doubt that Charlemagne, in 802 A.D., gave a great 
impulse to this monastery school. Among other 
reforms, he ordered Greek books to be translated 
from the Arabic into Latin. It is certain that between 
this date and the appearance of the first man who may 
be said to have had an European medical reputation 
as a teacher, Salernum was known, in consequence 
of the " public " instructions given by the monks of the 
neighbouring monastery, as a civitas Hippoci'atica. 

The abbot of the monastery from 856, Bertharius 

* Literarum studiis operam dare et in omnibus prreclaiis disciplinis 
sues oinnes erudire. 

t Concionare aut publice legere. 

X Page 34 of Ackermann's '* Regimen Scholae Salemitanae." 



SCHOLA SALERNITANA. II3 

(of French origin), was a very learned man, and two 
manuscripts of his are said to be still in existence in 
which he had made a collection of hygienic and cura- 
tive rules. He and his monks were massacred by the 
Saracens in ZZ^. Again, Alphanus (secundus), distin- 
guished in philosophy and theology, and not less 
skilled in singing than in medicine, wrote a book on 
"The Union of the Soul and Body," and another on 
" The Four Humours." Desiderius, another abbot of 
the monastery, and afterwards pope (Victor HI. 1085 
A.D.), is recorded to have been inedicince peritissiinus. 

It is only about this date that we reach a man 
of European reputation who finally placed Salernum 
in the front as a great and specialized medical 
stiidiimi publicum. We refer to Constantine, the 
Carthaginian Christian, who had spent the greater 
part of his life in travel and study, especially in the 
East. It is recorded that in Babylon he studied 
grammar, dialectic, arithmetic, mathematics, necro- 
mancy, music, and physics. He visited also India 
and Egypt, and returned to Carthage the most 
learned man of his time in all medical science. 
The jealousy of rivals and a suspicion of dealing 
in witchcraft compelled him to flee from his native 
city, and he naturally took refuge in Salernum. 
There he was held in high favour by Robert Guis- 
card the Norman, who had by this time conquered 
Apulia, and was no less distinguished as a patron of 
arts and letters than as a warrior. Constantine pub- 



114 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

lished many medical works of his own, including com- 
pendiums, translated many from the Arabic, and 
finally, retiring to the monastery on Monte Cassino, 
died there in 1087. The precise date of his arrival in 
Salernum is not given, but if we fix it at 1065, we may 
assume this as the date of the established European 
reputation of the Salernitan school. About this time, 
if not indeed before it, the school was frequented not 
only by students from all parts of Italy and France, 
but by some from Germany, and even by Moors and 
Jews. Medicine is said to have been taught in the 
Hebrew as well as in the Latin tongue. Whether all 
the Christian teachers at Salernum were at this time 
monks or not is uncertain ; but this is clear, that the 
monks and others taught publicly in Salernum, and 
were not limited as to the class of students they 
welcomed. Jews also taught. 

Contemporary with Constantine there were also 
lady-students. Gisulfus, Duke of Salernum, who had 
been displaced by Robert Guiscard, had a sister named 
Sichelgaita who had a medical reputation, especially 
in the department of poisons ; and several other female 
medical writers are referred to in those early times. 
Whether the body of teachers was in any way organ- 
ized as a " college " so early as this is not very clear. 
But the celebrated health rules written in Latin verse, 
and addressed to the King of England in iioo A.D., 
show that at that date, if not earlier, there was a col- 
legiate combination of some sort, for the writers call 



SCHOLA SALERNITANA. I15 

themselves tota schola SalernL We know also from 
Giannone's "History of Naples" that Duke Robert, 
brother of William the Conqueror, resorted to Salernum 
as a recognized school of medicine on h.-s way home 
from the Crusades in 1096, to be there treated for a 
serious wound.* 

Robert Guiscard (who died in 1085) conferred 
privileges on the m.edical school, and as these would 
not be conferred on individuals, but on a body of 
teachers who had already voluntarily, in some fashioi:, 
organized themselves, we may safely date the collegiiun 
not later than 1060 A.D. ; and certainly before iioo 
A.D. (probably long before), the head of the school 
was known under the designation of " prior. " Before 
IIOO, Roger, who succeeded his father Robert, con- 
ferred additional privileges on the schola. That there 
was at this time, and had been for some time, a 
thoroughly organized college, is evident from the 
terms of the Rogerian precept or decree. 

Roger II. in 1137 instituted the first state ex- 
aminations in medicine. All those desirous to 
practise medicine had to pass an examination, at 
which royal assessors were present. Those who 
passed received a licence. Though the college gave 
the licence, it was given under the authority of the 
Crown. The penalty for practising without a licence 
was imprisonment and confiscation of goods. This 

* To this visit is said to have been due the inscription of the famous 
Salernitan medical verses to " the King of England.** 



Ii6 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

was done, the statute says, ne in regno nostra subjecti 
periclitentur imperitia medicorum. The sale of drugs 
was not regulated till some years later. Even for 
permission to practise surgery — an art practised in 
other countries for centuries after this by barbers — 
— it was required by the Crown that there should 
be one year's attendance on lecturers who taught 
anatomy and chirurgy. The qualification to teach is 
not referred to. The degree in Paris, and other 
universities modelled on it, was, as we shall afterwards 
see, a licencia docendi ; but in Salernum it was a 
licencia medendi, or licence to practise the healing art. 
I think, then, that we may date Salernum as a public 
school from A.D. 1060, and as a privileged school from 
1 100. 

University of Naples. 
Meanwhile, the general movement in the higher 
education had been making great progress at Bologna, 
Paris, Oxford, and at the specialized schools of 
Montpellier (medicine) and Orleans (civil law). St. 
Thomas Aquinas (born 1224) thus writes : " Quatuor 
sunt urbes caiteris praeeminentes, Parisius in scientiis, 
Salernum in medicinis, Bononia in legibus, Aurelianis 
in actoribus " (pleaders). Salernum was an arts as well 
as a medical school, for the college demanded a three 
years' course in arts as a preliminary to a five years' 
course of medicine ; but there did not exist in 
Southern Italy any school of law which could rival 
Bologna, or of theology which could rival Paris. But 



NAPLES. 117 

Naples had for long had teachers of law, though of no 
great reputation, and the vicinity of the Benedictine 
monastery of Monte Cassino made it easy to consti- 
tute a school of theology. Accordingly, Frederick II., 
Emperor of the Romans (the most remarkable sove- 
reign since Charlemagne), resolved in 1224 to con- 
stitute an university at Naples, which should embrace 
the studies of the three faculties, in addition, of 
course, to what we now call the arts, or preliminary 
course (the trivmni). In the preamble to the consti- 
tution, he refers to Naples as having been for long the 
mother and home of studies. The various schools he 
professed merely to collect together as a universitas 
sttidlortim. Frederick desired cujusque professionis 
vigere studia, and to secure this resolved to appoint 
"doctores et magistros in qualibet facultate." In other 
words, Naples was to have no longer merely a loose 
aggregation of independent teachers, but an organized 
body with certain status, titles, privileges, and im- 
munities. And this is what is meant by formally 
constituting an " university." It is the granting of a 
charter of incorporation to a community of learned 
men, securing these men as teachers in a certain posi- 
tion of dignity and emolument, and giving them as a 
corporate body powers to confer privileges in connec- 
tion with the professions — the public mark of the 
privilege being called a licence or degree. 

If any individual or body of individuals who may 
have received the licence or degree were, in their turn, 



ii8 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

to claim a rig-ht to confer such licences and titles on 
others, they would manifestly usurp the function of 
the university — of which they are merely individual 
members. This has been done more than once, but 
it is an abnormal act. The corporation, again, is 
represented by the governing bodies. A duplication 
of a governing body would be a duplication of the 
university. No individual citizens or body of indi- 
viduals can, by virtue of their mere citizenship, set up 
a system of police within the already existing muni- 
cipal system. A recent proposal emanating from 
Edinburgh to incorporate certain medical graduates, 
already recognized as teaching for licences and 
degrees, as a collegium, is virtually a proposal to 
establish another university alongside the existing 
one, and this, too, a merely medical university. 
"The masters and doctors" of the said collegium 
would quickly and naturally agitate for the exclusion 
of the university professors from the post of examiners 
for degrees, and the appointment, in their stead, 
of State-examiners. Such proposals may or may 
not tend to the maintenance of a high standard 
of professional qualification, and to the advance- 
ment of science and learning — which two objects we 
take to be the aim of universities. I do not here 
discuss the question ; but I would merely point out 
that such claims cannot logically stop short at one 
faculty, and that a successful issue to any such 
movement must end in the entire dissolution of the 



NAPLES. 119 

"university/ as hitherto understood, or in the es- 
tablishment of two — and why not three or four? — 
rival universities in the same town. 

When Frederick constituted the University of 
Naples, his statutes show the conditions which he 
and his ministers then considered necessary to the 
existence of a university institution as distinguished 
from a mere gymnasium school, or from a voluntary 
aggregation of teachers : — 

Firstly. The various scattered " schools " were 
ordered to be united as one universitas studioriim. 

Secondly. This universitas had the royal sanction 
and protection, and was thus constituted (so to speak) 
the intellectual organ of the State. 

Thirdly. The sovereign power called certain 
masters or doctors to act as professors. 

Fourthly. The sovereign power guaranteed 
certain salaries to some, if not all, the recognized 
professors. 

Fifthly. The sovereign power prohibited all com- 
peting schools within the kingdom (exception being, 
of course, made in favour of grammar schools), and 
imposed penalties on young men who ignored their 
own national university and went elsewhere. 

Sixthly. The title of " professor " was conferred 
by the sovereign power on the recognized doctors of 
the " universitas doctorum et scholariumr (It could 
not be assumed by any dancing-master or quack who 
chose, as in these days.) 



120 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

Seventhly. The sovereign power granted the 
licence (or degree) through the High Chancellor or 
other State authority, to whom the student carried a 
faculty or university certificate that he had been duly 
examined and found qualified. 

Eighthly. Professors were further freed from the 
payment of taxes and from service in war, and had 
other immunities. What these were it is difficult 
to say. The words used were, " Liberi, franchi et 
immunes ab omnibus et singulis solutionibus." * 

Ninthly. In civil causes the students were made 
subject to the university authorities alone. Lodging- 
houses were licensed and placed under supervision. 

Naples was thus an university founded by the 
State solely, like Palentia in Spain, where St. 
Dominic studied, and which was founded by Alonso 
VIII. in 1212. 

Petrus de Hibernia was called by the sovereign 
to be the first professor of law, and Herasmus, a 
Benedictine monk, was invited to be the first 
" theologise scientiae professor." The course of study 
laid down was, as in the neighbouring College of 
Salernum, three years in arts and five years in 
medicine. 

Notwithstanding the position thus assigned to the 
new university, the privileges of the Salernitan 
College, thirty miles distant, were preserved. The 
• Ackermann, p. 84, 



NAPLES, X2I 

teachers there, with the prior at their head, were 
formally allowed to retain their right to grant licences 
and make magistri, — State assessors, or commissioners, 
being, however, associated with the doctors in the 
examinations. 

The statutes of Frederick throw some light on the 
difference between a person qualified to practise (the 
proper title being medicus) and one qualified to teach 
{inagister or doctor), but they do not settle the 
question. That, from the earliest times, the distinc- 
tion was not clearly marked, follows from the fact 
that the title teacher or doctor, as well as the title 
inagister, was assumed by the licensed practitioner, or 
at least popularly assigned to him. To teach or read 
{legere, whence lecture) was the function of the 
magister or doctor, and of no other; and in the 
thirty-fourth clause of Frederick's statute, section 4, 
it is ordered " that no one shall teach at Salernum or 
Naples, or assume the title of inagister in medicine or 
surgery till carefully examined by the State officials 
and the masters of these arts." As this is made the 
subject of a separate clause, it is clear that, prior to 
1224, the licencia medendi was one thing, and the 
licencia legendi or docendi another. It cannot be 
doubted that, just as universities grew out of the 
specialization of studies, so " professors," or privileged 
teachers, grew within the universities out of the 
specialization of parts of studies. 

Certain statutes were at the same time passed for 



122 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

the further regulation of the medical profession. For 
example, fees for attendance on patients were fixed 
by the State, and all physicians were required to 
promise to give their services to the poor gratuitously. 
It is interesting to note that Hippocrates, in the fifth 
century before Christ was wont to require his students 
to make a declaration to serve the poor without fee. 
Frederick further ordained that, even after the licence 
was granted, no young man should be allowed to 
practise until he had spent a year in the service of an 
established physician. The rule already in opera- 
tion at Salernum, which required surgeons to study 
anatomy for a year, and pass an examination in 
surgery conducted by the "masters" of the medical 
faculty, was re-enacted at Naples. Physicians were 
prohibited from having any connection with the sale 
of drugs or with apothecaries' shops. These were all 
regulated and duly licensed. 

We thus see, in the case of Salernum and Naples, 
how independent and voluntary schools gradually 
took the form of a studium generale or " university " 
in the large sense of these terms. It may be asked 
now, "Was the school at Salernum a university at 
all?" The answer is that, prior to the foundation 
of the University of Naples, it would be rightly 
called a studium generale or tiniversitas, as we shall 
see when we come to speak of the historical meaning 
of this and other academic terms, but after the foun- 



NAPLES. 



123 



dation of the Neapolitan University it would be more 
correctly called a collegium or " faculty " of the Uni- 
versity of Naples. And this although it had always 
a preliminary course in arts.' Even after Salernum 
had a teacher of law (his epitaph, 1340, calls him 
juris civilis professor) it could not doctorate in law.* 

* In 1252 Conrad II,, finding the University of Naples unsuccessful, 
or rather dissolved, endeavoured to make Salernum the stadium generale 
of all the faculties. It was probably alter this that law was taught. 
But in 1258 Manfred restored the University of Naples, and Salernum 
fell back to its old place. 



124 MEDIALVAL EDUCATlOJSl AND UNIVERSITIES. 



LECTURE VIII. 

THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 

In speaking of mediaeval education, we referred to 
the schools of law in Constantinople, Rome, and 
Berytus {legiim imtrix). In 554 Justinian confirmed 
the Roman school, securing its endowments. These 
schools continued till the beginning of the seventh 
century at least. At what date they ceased to exist 
is uncertain. A law school arose at Ravenna after 
♦^he cessation of the Roman school and the trans- 
f'^rence of the seat of government. As Savigny 
points out, it is absurd to suppose that three en- 
dowed public schools could supply the wants of 
the Eastern and Western empires. Law in its higher 
aspects was taught at these schools alone : but at the 
provincial secondary schools, the addition of law, for 
the instruction and preparation of ordinary practi- 
tioners, was not uncommon ; and this long after these 
schools had ceased to have advanced teaching under 
the orator, or rhetorician, or sophist. Pope Leo IX., 
in 1054, refers to instruction in law as part of a 



THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 125 

curriculum of what in other respects would be called 
a "Trivial" or secondary school. Alcuin mentions 
jurisprudence among the studies pursued at the York 
school in the latter portion of the eighth century. 
Of Lancfranc, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury 
(died 1089), it is stated that he studied at Pavia the 
"Hberal arts and jurisprudence according to the 
custom of his native city, and soon acquired credit as 
a debater of law questions." * There is also evidence 
that law was part of the instruction at Orleans in the 
ninth century. Whether the school of law at Rome 
was finally removed to Ravenna or not, this final 
removal could not have taken place, according to 
Savigny, till the end of the tenth century. In 964 
judices and legis doctores are spoken of as attending 
an ecclesiastical synod. Further evidence might be 
adduced ; but what I have said suffices to show that, 
while "high schools" of jurisprudence, such as existed 
in the fifth and sixth centuries, had ceased to exist, 
Roman law continued to be taught in a few pro- 
vincial grammar schools, and afterwards in some 
higher monastery schools. 

Throughout the Middle Ages the Roman law, 
that is to say, the Code of Justinian, the Pandects, 
and the Institutions, were partially known. But 
such law as was taught north of the Alps was 
represented by the Theodosian Code. A few quota- 
tions from the Institutions or the Pandects in the 

• Milonis Crispin! Vita Lancfranci, cap. 5, quoted by Savigny. 



126 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

writings of a monk here and there can scarcely 
satisfy us that these books were to be found in the 
monastic hbraries. South of the Alps, manuscripts 
were to be found, but the study of these had prac- 
tically ceased before the time of Charlemagne. I 
say practically ceased, for there were feeble survivals 
of a restricted law teaching which recognized the 
Justinian books, at Pavia, Ravenna, and Bologna. 

It was the learning and earnest devotion of one 
mind — that of Irnerius — to the civil law which re- 
vived the study ; but had not time and circumstances 
favoured, the influence of Irnerius would have been as 
restricted and fleeting as that of Scotus Erigena two 
hundred years earlier in the field of metaphysics. 
The time was, however, ripe, and a combination of 
circumstances contributed to the revival of the teach- 
ing of Roman law at the beginning of the twelfth 
century. The municipalities, very many of which 
had never quite lost their Roman constitution, had 
recovered, especially in Lombardy, much of their 
ancient vigour, and consequently demanded a more 
thorough and scientific legal system. The gradual 
amalgamation of the population in Italy and beyond 
the Alps under civil and ecclesiastical influences, the 
universal diffusion of the Latin tongue, and the 
restitution of the Roman empire under its new 
spiritual form, facilitated the acceptance of the old 
Roman law. That it should have been at Bologna 
and not elsewhere that the new school arose, is to 



THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 127 

be explained, partly by the vicinity of the still sur- 
viving law school at Ravenna, partly by the rise of 
Bologna itself to be one of the most populous and 
wealthy cities of Italy. This is all true ; but still 
one man did the work, and that man was Irnerius 
(Werner, Guarnerius, Guernerius, etc.). Towards the 
end of the eleventh century he seems to have been 
a teacher in the Arts school at Bologna. We soon 
find him, however, professing the civil law, and after- 
wards taking his part in important affairs of state. 
As with the beginnings of all movements, we find 
legendary explanations of the causes which led 
Irnerius to the study and profession of the civil 
law. It is said that, having been consulted one 
day as to the meaning of a Latin legal term, he was 
led, by his inquiries into its signification, to enter into 
the whole subject of Roman law, and thereupon to 
" professing " it in connection with the school of arts 
where he was a master. Another account, repeated 
by Crevier, is that a manuscript of the Pandects of 
Justinian was discovered at the taking of Amalfi, and 
was sent to Irnerius to edit, he having already some 
reputation as a catisidicus ; and that, having accom- 
plished this task, he thereafter devoted his life to 
the exposition of the whole civil law as contained in 
the Codex, the Institutions, Pandects, etc. 

It is not necessary to accept either of these fables. 
The important fact is, that Irnerius was publicly 

teaching the civil law to all who chose to study it in 
11 



128 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

the first years of the twelfth century. It is not too 
much to say that this jurist rediscovered Roman law 
for Europe. It would be difficult to over-estimate the 
effects of his labours on the progress of civilization. 
The probable date of his birth was somewhere about 
the year 1070, and he died somewhere about 1138, 
after having attained great distinction both as a jurist 
and a judge. 

To the school of law founded by Irnerius there 
flocked great numbers of youths, some of whom were 
preparing for ecclesiastical work, some for the work of 
lay practitioners or the secular service of the States 
to which they belonged. The lectures were public, 
and not in any way connected with a monastic 
institution. From Bologna the civil law travelled to 
many Italian towns, as well as to Angers and Orleans. 

Here, again, we find confirmation of the view 
which we have taken of the causes which led to the 
rise of universities, in so far as these are to be dis- 
tinguished from the ordinary monastic gymnasia and 
cathedral schools. One Italian writer speaks of the 
school of Bologna as an archigymnasiitm. But it was 
an archigymnasium differentiated from an ordinary 
arts gymnasium, not by the fact that it carried farther 
the general Arts studies of the gymnasium, which 
there is no evidence that it did, but rather by the 
fact that it specialized a department of study, and 
professed to teach it in all its extent to youths beyond 
the Arts stage of progress. In Salernum, as we said, 



THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 129 

this specialization was due to the intellectual activity 
of a few individuals, and to the accumulation of the 
stock of Greek and Arabic medical lore, which 
made a thorough knowledge of the whole field im- 
possible for any one save a specialist. So now, in 
Bologna, we see a specialization of the study of civil 
law — to which was soon added the canon law — under 
the influence of a single mind. As the Salernitan, so 
the new Bononian university school, was not founded, 
but grew out of small beginnings, under the general 
intellectual impulse of the time. Neither the one 
centre of learning nor the other was called an 
"university" in our modern sense, but constantly a 
"universitas" in the then sense of a "community." 
The institution was called a schola or stiidium, or, 
more generally (but only after a considerable period), 
a stiidiiun ptcblicujii or generale, i.e. a school open to 
all, free from the conditions of monastic vows or 
monastic discipline in any form, and where the curri- 
culum of arts was taught as well as the specialized 
study of the universitas.* 

As in many other Mediterranean towns, so in 
Bologna, the old Roman school of Arts, which reached 
its highest ideal conception under Quintilian, seems 
never to have quite died out. It survived under 
Christian influences. There was such a school in 
450 A.D. Charlemagne and his grandson Lothair did 

* But the arts were not at first drawn into the university system, 
except at Paris and in England. 



I30 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNll^ERSITIES 

much in the ninth century, as I have pointed outj 
to stimulate this and other ItaHan institutions, and 
here, in the eleventh century, we find Irnerius at first 
teaching the ordinary curriculum of the trivium and 
quadrivium.* Bologna had shortly before this become 
a free town, and we cannot doubt that this accession 
of dignity, and the introduction of self-government, 
would ^WQ. a fresh impulse to all the civic institutions, 
including schools. 

The first formal recognition of the universitas of 
Bologna was by Frederick I., in 1158, when the lead- 
ing juridical doctors were Bulgarus, Jacob, Martin, and 
Hugo. This " privilege," however, was based on the 
assumption that the school was already a flourishing 
one, with recognized usages, and it directed itself 
mainly to securing protection for travelling students 
and resident aliens, giving them the right of being 
judged by their own dominus or magister, or by the 
bishop. This right extended to criminal as well as 
civil cases, and long existed. It was only after this 
date that Bologna was a formally privileged studium. 

The university statutes of 1254 were formally 
confirmed by the then pope ; but the action of Pope 
Honorius III., in 12 16, to which we shall have imme- 
diately to refer, was itself as valid as a formal con- 
firmation of consuetudinary laws. 

Irnerius had distinguished pupils, who, as doctors 
of law, maintained the reputation of the school after 
* There is no evidence that this was a cathedral school 



THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 131 

his death. It became known as the " Mother of 
Laws," and attracted ever-increasing numbers from 
all Europe. When Frederick II. established the 
University of Naples in 1224, he did so partly, as 
he himself states, to bring the best teaching within 
reach of the youth of Southern Italy, and to make 
it unnecessary for them to travel to Bologna. He 
was also influenced by the disputes which had already 
arisen between town and gown in Bologna, and which 
gave rise to frequent breaches of the law. 

In the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the 
time of the celebrated jurist Azo, there were, it is 
said, already 10,000 students at Bologna, and in the 
time of Roger Bacon there were 20,000. So large a 
body of youth, and among them hundreds of mature 
men, collected in one small town soon felt the ne- 
cessity of organization, with a view to mutual help 
and to common protection against civic interference. 
They had not at first, let it be remembered, the 
defence which the monastic and conventual estab- 
lishments had always found in the all-powerful pro- 
tection of their own recognized constitutions and 
the supreme protection of the pope. Here, in fact, 
was a new kind of community altogether, — new 
in the history of Christendom at least, — essentially 
lay in its characteristics, and yet so far connected 
with the monkish orders that it had intellectual and 
moral aims. Already the example of organizations 
within the existing municipal organizations was before 



132 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

them. The trade guilds and the order of chivalry 
were within the knowledge of all. Accordingly^ 
students from the same part of the world naturally 
imitated these institutions and coalesced into groups 
of communities, loosely held together, perhaps, but 
yet recognizing that they had common interests. 
Thus arose the " nations," so famous in all university 
history, to one or other of which all students belonged. 
They constituted free self-governing societies within 
the universitas.* 

These " nations " existed in the latter half of the 
twelfth century, if not earlier. Through their con- 
siliarii (or procurators, as they were called in Paris) 
they gradually acquired certain student privileges, 
among which the most important was the right, for- 
mally conceded by Frederick I., of being judged by the 
university authorities, and this even in criminal cases. 

That there was a tendency to abuse these privileges, 
especially in the democratic University of Bologna, 
is certain. The civic power granted or acquiesced in 
the assumption of many rights, and condoned even 
many licences, because they were afraid to lose the 
students. There were no university buildings of any 
importance : the doctors taught in their own houses 
or in hired apartments ; and it would have been an 
easy thing for the whole university to migrate, and 
desert the town, which owed much of its prosperity 

• The students zvho belonged to the town of Bologna were not 
included in the " nations." 



THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 133 

to them ; and this threat, indeed, was often held 
over magistrates. At the same time it lay with the 
doctors rather than the pupils to migrate, and this 
gave additional authority to the doctors, and enabled 
them to keep the civic magistracy in awe of their 
power ; indeed, they feared them so much that they 
ultimately demanded from them an oath, on their 
entering office, that they would not teach elsewhere. 
On the other hand, the students, when other schools 
arose, could keep the doctors in subjection by 
threatening to leave in a body and study elsewhere. 

It was not while the " nations " were numerous 
and divided that they were a source of danger to the 
discipline of the university and the supremacy of the 
civic power. But when they began to combine and 
to pass their own laws, and look to a rector elected by 
themselves for guidance and protection; and especially 
when this tendency to union with a view to strength 
resulted in the combination of the various bodies into 
X.\NOy—iiniversitas citrainoittanorum and Ufiiversitas 
ultratnontaitorum (12 10- 12 20), — the doctors, in whom 
the sovereign authority lay, and who exercised it in 
harmony with the civil power, would naturally feel 
anxious. The universitas ultramontanorum was com- 
posed of eighteen nations, the tmiversitas citramonta- 
norum of seventeen. Each universitas elected its own 
rector and other university authorities.* Each of these 

* It is not till the beginning of the sixteenth century that we find 
only one rector. 



134 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

united bodies practically constituted themselves into 
two powerful corporations within the university. The 
students had now virtually superseded the doctors in 
the government. 

Accordingly, at the instigation of the latter, the 
magistrates of Bologna endeavoured by a civil enact- 
ment to restrict the student organizations. Hence 
many strifes ; and it is to this kind of antagonism 
between civic authorities and university authorities, 
and the difficulties arising out of the conflicting 
municipal and university jurisdictions, that we owe 
the long series of town-and-gown riots which once 
had a meaning, but which are now mere ghostly 
survivals of defunct realities. The students, being 
hard pressed by the doctors of civil law and magis- 
trates combined, finally resolved to appeal to the 
pope, who would be (as may be supposed) very ready 
to interfere, as he thereby had his own supreme au- 
thority over the rising university school acknowledged. 
The students boldly alleged that their customary 
rights were being interfered with, and that the 
magistrates, and not they, were infringing the law. 
Pope Honorius III. (died 1216), a man reputed learned 
and pious, took the part of the students, and ordered 
the magistracy of Bologna to respect their rights. In 
the pope's epistle, he says that the new municipal 
statutes were unjust and in the teeth of scholastic 
liberty, and of an ancient freedom up to that time 



THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 135 

exercised.* Rights and privileges, and a certain 
constitutional organization, had been simply assumed 
by the rising school, and formally recognized by 
Frederick I. ; the civic power had either aided and 
abetted the organizations in their claims, or acquiesced 
in their acts. It was now too late to interfere. 

This gradual assumption of rights has to be 
specially noted in connection with the rise of all 
universities prior to that of Naples (1224). Padua 
was so destitute of civil or papal charters, that the 
question at one time arose whether it was entitled 
to exercise the university powers which it assumed, 
and distinguished jurists decided that long usage was 
as good a title as any papal bull or royal charter, if 
not, indeed, a better title. Nothing, indeed, can more 
strikingly illustrate the true primary character of a 
university, as simply a voluntary association of 
teachers (Doctores, Magistri) and learners usurping 
to themselves certain rights and privileges, than the 
origin of Padua. The disputes at Bologna caused a 
secession which established itself in Padua, and of its 
own motion called itself the studiinn generate of 
Padua, and began to discharge the duties and exer- 
cise the rights of such a body. This was in 1222. 
Vicenza arose in a similar way in 1204. It was not 
till 1228 A.D. that Padua had any formal recogni- 

* "Statuta. . . suntiniqua et manifeste obviant scholasticselibertati 
• • • contra libertatem hactenus habitam," etc. 



136 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

tion, and it even seems to be doubtful if we can 
date this before the "letters" of Urban IV., thirty 
years later. 

It was not till 1 158, as I have already stated, 
that Bologna was formally recognized, and this by 
letters of privilege issued by Frederick I. These 
letters of privilege, I have also pointed out, assumed 
already existing usages. One can easily understand 
that, where local questions as to the powers of the 
university body arose, the authorities would take 
steps to get something of the nature of statutory defi- 
nition from either pope or prince, as Bologna after- 
wards did in 1254. This was manifestly the case 
again and again with Paris, which, as the centre of 
theological teaching, bore always a closer relation to 
the pope than the Italian schools, and was fondly 
called the Mother of Universities and the Sinai of the 
Middle Ages. 

The papal recognition was always of great im- 
portance, if not essential, to universities. It brought 
the power of the Church, then dominating all civil 
powers, to the help of the young communities as 
schools of learning, and gave universal European 
validity to the degrees which the protected university 
might confer, and not merely to the doctorship, as has 
been sometimes said. A licentia docendi in a papal 
university, whether it took the form of a mastership 
of arts, as in Paris, or of a doctorship, as in Italy, 
entitled the holder to teach at any university seat in 



THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 137 

Christendom. The popes had no jealousy of the 
universities. On the contrary, they hastened to recog- 
nize them. It may be that they astutely saw that, 
by conferring privileges, they indirectly acquired 
rights over both teachers and students. 

But, the rescripts proceeding from the papal chair 
in favour of universities were not, in the case of the 
earliest universities, bulls or charters of foundation, 
but letters of privilege issued simply for the purpose 
of strengthening the infant communities. Though 
Bologna, Padua, and Paris, Oxford and Cambridge, 
received many such letters, none of these studia 
was formally constituted an university by the pope. 
It is only after the erection of the University of 
Naples by Frederick II. in 1224 that we find the 
pope formally instituting universities ; and this right 
continued to be exercised by him till the Reformation, 
generally in conjunction with the civil power. 

As to the governing authority : At Bologna, a 
rector, elected by the outgoing r.ector, the consiliarii, 
and the general body of students, held office for one 
year, and wielded great power during his term. No 
member of a monastic order could hold the rector- 
ship. The teaching doctors or professors, no less 
than the students, were subject to the rectors. A 
professor could not leave his duties for a {^\n days 
without obtaining formal permission from him, and 
if the term of absence exceeded eight days, he had to 
get permission from the whole university. So entirely 



138 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

were the professors kept subject to the whole uni- 
versity, that they were disquaHfied for university 
official positions. Their statutory position and rights 
were little better than those of the students. But in 
their capacity of scholars or students the professors 
exercised power along with those they taught. It 
was merely qux professors that they had no ad- 
ditional prerogatives. The councillors (consiliarii) 
whom I have named above, sat with each rector. 
They represented the separate nations, and were 
elected by them. There were, accordingly, eighteen 
councillors sitting with the rector of the Ultramontani, 
and seventeen with the rector of the Citramontani. 
The only other officers were a syndic, who represented 
both universitates before other courts, a notary, a 
treasurer, and two beadles. 

The doctors held in their hands, however, the 
management of the schools and of promotions. In 
the latter half of the thirteenth century, also, they 
formed themselves into colleges, and so strengthened 
their position relatively to the universitas. The term 
" doctor," I need scarcely repeat, was simply equiva- 
lent to " master." 

The system of lectures, repetitions, and disputa- 
tions seems to have been very strictly organized. 

For the degree of doctor there were two examina- 
tions, a private and a public, and the degree was 
conferred in the cathedral by the archdeacon. The 
private examination gave the title of licentiate — the 



THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 139 

licencia docendi ; but only after the public examina- 
tion was the title of doctor conferred (this, after a 
certain date, by the archdeacon who was Cancellarius). 
As I shall recur to the graduation system in a future 
lecture, this brief statement will suffice here. 

The canon law, or Decretum, was added to the 
Bononian studies shortly before the recognition of 
Frederick I. Schools of arts and medicine, as part of 
the academic organization, did not exist till 1 3 16; 
but for a considerable period before this, both arts 
and medical professors taught in connection with 
the university, but formed no part of its constitution. 
The school of theology was not added till 1360 by 
Innocent VI.* These subjects, however, did not 
flourish in Italy, the home of jurisprudence. Dante 
complains of the exclusive academic devotion to law. 
But the truth is, legal studies were the best passport 
to high office and profitable employment. 

The Bolognese, notwithstanding numerous con- 
tests with the academical authorities, were proud of 
their university. Both scholars and teachers were held 
in respect, and exempted from military service, and 
from all taxes and imposts whatsoever. The municipal 
authorities also united with the university authorities 
in protecting the students from the overcharges of 
lodging-house keepers. The notary of the university 
kept a list of approved lodgings, and the civic autho- 
rities fixed the price of them. 

* Savigny, xxi. (>*t* 



140 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

Towards the latter half of the fourteenth century 
we find Bologna fully developed. There were then 
four *'universitates " — the two juristic formerly men- 
tioned, the artist and medical as one, and the theo- 
logical, but all these parts of one studium generale. 
The theological university was constituted on the 
model of Paris, and was a nniversitas magistroruni 
only, not scholarium. The theological students, when 
they sought to share in the general privileges of the 
university, did so as "artists" or arts students.* It 
cannot escape the notice of the reader that in these 
Bononian " universitates," as finally constituted, we 
simply have what we now call "faculties." In 1338 
there were twenty-seven professors of civil law, twelve 
of canon law, fourteen of medicine, fifteen of arts, 
i.e. grammarians and teachers of the notarial art. 

* A student in the theological faculty would also be a magister 
artium, and so an artist. 



LECTURE IX. 

UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 

As at Bologna and Salernum, there was at Paris a 
well-known Arts school, that of Notre Dame, before 
the rise of an university. At the two former I con- 
sider that the universities were offshoots of the 
schools ; but at Paris the universitas arose directly 
out of the Arts school, and from the first enjoyed 
such privileges as v/ere possessed by the claustral or 
cathedral school. It does not clearly appear to what 
extent the suburban schools of St. Genevieve and 
St. Victor contributed to the formation of the univer- 
sitas, but they. could not but have had great influence. 
In the Paris school, in the beginning of the eleventh 
century, a learned monk, William of Champeaux, 
taught theology. A still more famous theological 
school, however, existed at Bee, in Normandy, pre- 
sided over by Lancfranc, afterwards Archbishop of 
Canterbury ; while Rheims and Chartres were also 
important centres of instruction. It was at Bee, 
not Paris, that Anselm studied in 1060, succeeding 



142 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVRESITIES. 

Lancfranc as head of that monastery and school, and 
subsequently following him as Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, to which primacy he was appointed in 1093. 
That the intellect of the Church was deeply stirred 
at this time is evident from the reception accorded 
to Anselm's writings. He endeavoured, in full sub- 
mission to the faith, to rationalize Christian doctrine, 
and was himself of so ardent a nature that it is 
highly probable that we should have had to name 
him and not Abelard as giving the first intellectual 
impulse which initiated the University of Paris, had 
he not been preoccupied by his work at Bee and 
Canterbury. 

When Anselm became Archbishop of Canterbury, 
Abelard was only fourteen years old. This remark- 
able man sacrificed high prospects in a secular career 
in order to devote himself to theology and philosophy, 
preferring, as he said, to enrol himself under the 
standard of Minerva rather than that of Mars. A few 
years before this ardent and ambitious youth betook 
himself to study, John Roscelin, a native of Brittany 
and Canon of Compiegne, had begun to speculate on 
the nature of abstract concepts and terms, and had 
laid the foundation of the doctrine of Nominalism.* 
Abelard became a pupil and a promulgator of his 
philosophy. From Roscelin and Anselm, Abelard 
drew his first inspiration. William of Champeaux, 

* The discussions on universals is said to have started from a 
]).i.ssage in Porphyry's "Isagoge," a book studied in the monasteries. 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 143 

pupil of Anselm, surnamed the " Pillar of Doctors," 
was at this time at the head of the Episcopal (or 
Cloister) School of Paris, where the usual course in 
arts (both triviinn and quadriviinn) was taught. This 
school was then the most famous in Europe, and had 
been raised under William to a higher eminence than 
it had ever before held. In truth, it so entirely out- 
stripped its rivals under his presidency, that we might 
almost regard him as the founder of the university as 
a specialized school. 

Abelard could not have been more than a boy 
when he came to Paris to pursue his studies there. 
For, as early as 1102, when he was only twenty-three 
years of age, we find that, after having questioned the 
doctrines of his master, and incurred his serious dis- 
pleasure by his independence of opinion, and doubtless 
also by the youthful sauciness of his argumentation 
he opened a school of dialectic of his own at Melun. 
In 1 1 13 we find him, after many successes and re- 
verses, teaching theology as well as dialectic, as the 
head of the Paris school, William of Champeaux 
having been meanwhile promoted to the bishopric 
of Chalons-sur-Marne. 

It would be out of place here to follow the roman- 
tic and tragic story of Abelard. Our concern is 
simply with his relations to the intellectual move- 
ments of Europe, and the universities which grew out 
of them. Having had to retire from the Paris school 
owing to the scandal which arose out of the mis- 
12 



144 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

fortunes and indiscretions of his career, he retired into 
the monastic life ; but he afterwards reopened his 
school at St. Denis, where he had become a Bene- 
dictine monk at the same time that Heloise took the 
veil at Argenteuil. He was now thirty-six or thirty- 
seven years of age. It was only at the urgent solici- 
tation of crowds of students that he consented again 
to teach. He taught in a hospitium attached to the 
monastery, and it is said that his students numbered 
at one time three thousand, and included youths from 
all parts of Europe. The jealousy of the doctors of 
the Paris school, and the suspicions of heresy under 
which he fell, ultimately drove him to take refuge in 
Champagne, where he built a hut in a desert place, 
six miles from Nogent-sur-Seine, and called it Para- 
clete, or " The Consolation." But he was not allowed 
to remain and nurse his melancholy in solitude. 
Students again began to crowd round him, and, erect- 
ing tents and mud huts covered with thatch, they 
prosecuted their studies in the wilds, contenting 
themselves with the simplest rustic fare. With their 
own hands, it is said, they rebuilt with stone the 
oratory which he had himself built with reeds and 
thatch. Thus was what might quite correctly be 
called the University of Paris now transferred from 
St. Denis to the forests of France. From this retreat 
Abelard had, however, again to seek safety in flight. 
The doctors of the Church, with St. Norbert and 
St. Bernard at their head, did not cease to denounce 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, 145 

him to the pope as a heretic. "The human mind," 
writes St. Bernard to the pope, "usurps everything, 
leaves nothing to faith." Here we see for the first 
time, and this in France, the intimate connection of 
the university movement with freedom of inquiry. It 
is, in truth, to the free activity of the human mind in 
deahng with questions of abstract philosophy and 
theology, that we are indebted primarily for the scien- 
tific spirit. It was not the study of physical science 
which, either in the eleventh or twelfth, or afterwards 
in the fifteenth century, gained for mankind liberty of 
thought. This was the work of the philosopher and 
the man of letters. Physical science entered into the 
possession of a kingdom of liberty already conquered. 
Abelard, after having been twice condemned by 
Church councils, died in 1142 in the Abbey of Clugni.* 
But the impulse he had given to philosophic disputa- 
tion remained, and Paris, under his pupils and their 
rivals, became the centre of a higher specialized school 
of philosophy and theology, to which students con- 
tinued to flock from all parts of Europe. In this way 
the University of Paris, as distinguished from the Arts 
school, began. The theory of the rise of universities, 
which alone seems to me to interpret historical facts 
in the case of Salernum and Bologna, is thus, in the 
case of Paris, further confirmed. For in what respect 
did the school of Abelard differ from that of William 

* Strictly speaking, in a dependence of this abbey situated at 
Chalons, to which he had been sent for the bettering of his health. 



146 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

of Champeaux, which was a famous school of arts, 
including theolog-y? Only in this — that it was a 
specialized school of theology and its handmaid phi- 
losophy, intended for those who desired to continue 
their studies beyond the school age, open to all, and 
independent of monastic or canonical obligations — a 
studium generale. Hence numerous masters to meet 
the demand. As their number increased, organization 
became necessary. 

Note also that in the eleventh century it became 
the custom to require priests to learn by heart the 
decrees of councils and other Church laws. This body 
of ecclesiastical legislation, known as the Body of the 
Canon Law or the Decretum, had reached such pro- 
portions and complexity as to demand that specialized 
treatment which it now received at Paris alongside of 
theology. 

Having now indicated generally the origin of the 
Paris University as an intellectual movement, let us 
look for a moment at its historical antecedents. 

Although I hold that Abelard was to Paris what 
Constantinus was to Salernum, and Irnerius to Bo- 
logna, I am well aware that, prior to the appearance 
of Abelard on the scene, the Paris school had been for 
long a much-frequented and active centre of learn- 
ing,* and, indeed, had never lost the impulse given to it 

• Whether this centre was a monastery school or cathedral school 
(or a palatine school, as Bulaeus thinks, and as Crevier is disposed 
to think) matters little. It was the recognized arts school of Paris, and, 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 147 

by the Carollngian revival. A monk of Auxerre, 
the well-known Remi, had lectured publicly at Paris 
on dialectic and music about 900 A.D.* He died 
about 908. That he had successors there can be no 
doubt, for in 960 A.D., Abbon, subsequently Abbot 
of Fleuri, after having directed the studies of his 
monastery for some years, betook himself to Paris 
to extend his own knowledge. In 990 Bulaeus (i. p. 
313) says that a canon of Liege, named Hubold, had 
a large school at Paris in connection with the chapter 
of St. Genevieve. Crevier also concurs. Public 
lectures were delivered by Lambert in 1022, and he 
acquired wealth by his teaching. In the middle of 
the same century a Parisian, named Drogon, lectured. 
The Pole St. Stanislas, afterwards Bishop of Cracovia, 
came to Paris about this time to complete his studies. 
Other men, afterwards holding high offices in the 
Church, resorted to Paris for instruction towards the 
end of the eleventh century; and in 1053 it is stated 
that Valram, who had already studied at Bee under 
Lancfranc, came to Paris to lecture. Manegolde, a 
German, lectured in various towns of France, and 
ultimately at Paris in 1082. Crevier relates that this 
Manegolde was married to a cultivated wife, and that 
his daughters afterwards opened a school in Paris for 
girls — an interesting fact in the history of education. 

as closely connected with the cathedral of Notre Dame, was most 
probably a cathedral school with some monastic ties. 

* Acta Sane. Ord. Ben., torn. vii. p. 151. Also Crevier, i. p. 67, 
quoted by Viriville. 



148 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

One of Manegolde's pupils was the celebrated William 
of Champeaux, who, Villivry says, succeeded him as 
master of the Paris school. It is in connection with 
the above facts * that the question of the precise 
point at which the school of arts grew into an uni- 
versity becomes a question as interesting as it is diffi- 
cult. This is certain, that William of Champeaux 
became master of the cathedral school, and lectured 
specially and publicly, like his predecessors, on the- 
ology, and that under him Paris outstripped all its 
rivals, and became the recognized European centre 
of theological instruction. If further evidence be 
needed as to the pre-eminence of Paris as a central 
school in the end of the eleventh century, it will be 
found in a letter of Anselm's, written about 1090, 
when he was still Abbot of Bee. In this letter he refers 
to one of his monks — " qui propter scholas moratur 
apud Parisium et conversatur in monasterio S. 

Maglorii."t 

The specialized study of theology and canon law, 
wherever it existed, attracted students who had com- 
pleted their monastery or cathedral course in arts, 
or as much of it as they meant to take, and who 
intended to continue in the service of the Church. 
This habit of seeking instruction at learned centres 
existed, as I have shown, throughout the eleventh 

* For which I do not cite authorities, because the evidence is so 
ample. But in what sense Champeaux succeeded M anegolde is an open 
question. 

t Quoted by Mabillon, in ** De Studiis Monasticis," pt. i. c. 12. 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 149 

century, and, indeed, to some extent in the tenth. 
Accordingly, many other centres of study than Paris, 
Bologna, and Salernum might have become the first 
universities, had the accidents of time and place 
favoured them. Bee in Normandy, for example, was 
a greater theological school in the beginning of the 
eleventh century than either Paris or Rome ; and in 
the time of Lancfranc it was much frequented. In 
the prolegomena to a mystical explanation of the 
Song of Solomon by Wiliramus there occurs the 
following passage : " Unum in Francia comperi Lanc- 
francum nomine, autem maxime valentem in dia- 
betica, nunc ad ecclesiastica se contulisse studia . . . 
ad quem audiendum cum multi jiostrattwt {i.e. 
Germanorum) confluant," etc., etc. (quoted by Specht). 
But such local schools had to gwQ way before the 
superior attractions and facilities of access and of 
living which towns like Paris afforded. In the time 
of William of Champeaux Paris finally established its 
supremacy. "When one hears William of Cham- 
peaux," writes a contemporary, " one believes that an 
angel from heaven is speaking, not a man." 

Thirty years after William ceased to teach, John 
of Salisbury spent twelve years as a student in Paris, 
beginning in 1 136, and from him we learn that there 
then existed in Paris a large number of able masters 
who taught arts anji theology in their own schools. 
He himself names twelve, whom he either attended 
or personally knew. But as yet no conanion bond 



15© MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

united them. They were not a community living 
under general rules, and therefore not a universitas. 
The number of students who gathered round those 
teachers was very great. We begin to form some 
conception of the quality as well as the quantity of 
the auditors when we read that, of Abelard's pupils 
alone, twenty became cardinals, and fifty bishops or 
archbishops. The crowd of scholars had made it 
necessary to restrict the cloistral central school, at 
least in so far as its precincts afforded a residence, 
to members of the Church of Paris, so early as 1 1 27. 
Foreigners had to seek accommodation elsewhere. 

When William of Champeaux was lecturing in 
1097, and had among his pupils Abelard, the lectures 
were public, and the school was a schola publica. 
There were other schools held in the houses of St. 
Victor and St. Genevieve. Whether these latter were 
originally " public " schools or not, we know that the 
central school of arts, held in the cloister of Notre 
Dame, was certainly public, and had probably retained 
its " public " character from the time of Charlemagne. 
Other public schools arose about this time in the 
district afterwards called the "university" — many of 
these, doubtless, confining their curriculum to the 
trivium. The only restriction in opening a school 
was that it should be in the vicinity of the principal 
school. In this central school canon law as well as 
theology were publicly taught, — the former certainly 
after the Decretum of Gratian, dated 1 1 5 1, if not before. 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, 151 

While, therefore, we find in the impulse Abelard 
gave to philosophy the force that finally converted 
the arts school of Paris into a universitas, we see that 
public teaching had long existed. But, spite of this, 
it would be inaccurate to say that the central and 
surrounding schools actually constituted a universitas 
much before 1140, for, although there was specialized 
instruction of a public character, there was no free 
literary organization of masters. The spirit and 
essence of a studium generale was there, but not 
yet the form. It was in the reign of Louis VII., who 
ascended the throne in 1 135, that privileges were first 
conferred on the Paris school ; that is to say, in 
addition to those already adhering to it as an evo- 
lution of the old arts school of Notre Dame. If 
we further bear in mind that Alexander III., who 
ascended the papal chair in 1159, issued two bulls in 
favour of the rising school, in both of which it is 
recognized as an organization of some duration, we 
are justified, I think, in concluding that the Paris 
cathedral school never lost the impulse given to it 
by Charlemagne, that throughout the whole of the 
eleventh century it was an active centre both of 
theology and canon law, as well as of arts ; further, 
that it had not begun to free itself from the canonical 
organization till about iioo, under William, and that 
it did not wholly free itself until the specialization into 
a great theological and philosophical school was finally 
determined by the genius of Abelard. It was just 



J 52 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

about the time of Abelard's death, in fact, that the 
large and ever-increasing concourse of students not 
only testified to the celebrity of the new centre of 
learning, but led to the division of the students into 
'* nations " for purposes of mutual intercourse and 
protection ; but this as yet in a quite rudimentary 
and tentative form. 

Peter the Lombard lectured 1145-1159. The 
marking of the progress of studies by means of degrees 
seems to have begun during his regency, but this 
as yet in a somewhat irregular fashion. Nations 
existed about 1150 in some form more or less lax; 
but they were certainly not yet organized. The 
offer of Henry II. of England to appeal his quarrel 
with Thomas of Canterbury to the school of Paris 
makes mention of the nations, at least ^.?> provincial 
unions. 

But the "nations" were not the University of Paris, 
nor did they form the original basis of its organization. 
The numerous masters of arts, with the addition of the 
masters of theology and canon law, constituted the 
starting-point of the university as an organisation. If 
degrees began to be given before 1 1 59, it follows that 
the masters were organized in some fashion before that 
date ; nay, that those teaching arts, theology, and 
canon law had respectively some understanding among 
themselves which, though not constituting them 
faculties in the later sense, were certainly the be- 
ginnings of faculties. Matthew of Paris relates that 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, 153 

Jean de la Celle, elected Abbot of St. Alban's in 
1 195, had studied at Paris, and had been admitted 
there ad electortnn consortium magistroriim. The 
masters evidently held meetings and regulated all 
matters connected with instruction, and thus formed 
the first development of the studium generale out of 
the original school of arts. It would be superfluous 
to show that this was all both natural and necessary. 
True, both theology and the Decree were spoken ot 
in the twelfth century as artes liber ales, and the word 
"faculty," where it occurs, is simply equivalent to 
subject or department of study, but none the less were 
the beginnings of what afterwards became " faculties " 
then visible. And this beginning of the university in 
a consortium magistrorum influenced the organization 
of the universitas throughout its whole history. Paris, 
in fact, was commonly differentiated as a universitas 
magistrorum, although it called itself in its official 
documents a universitas magistrorum et scholarium, 
and the pope so addressed it. Thus the public arts 
school of Notre Dame took the first great step in its 
new evolution. 

The above view of the rise of the University ot 
Paris furnishes an explanation of many of its pecu- 
liarities. For example ; it was because it was the 
centre of theological learning that it received so many 
privileges from the pope, and was kept in such close 
relation to the papal see by a continuous succession 
of bulls : again, it was because it remained an arts 



154 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

school that its students were so young. The students 
of Bologna and Padua were much older than those of 
Paris, because the specific professional studies for 
which these universities were famous began only after 
the conclusion of an arts course. The quiet super- 
session of the old episcopal arts school by the uni- 
versity teaching of arts is also now quite intelligible. 
As soon as Paris became an European centre of 
education, it would be impossible for one cathedral 
school to accommodate all seeking admission, however 
willing the authorities might be to receive them. It 
was thus that various schools were opened, and that 
ere long teachers arose in connection with the 
nations, who carried the boys, who came from all 
parts of Europe, through a course precisely similar 
to that given in the monastery and cathedral schools ; 
that is to say, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, 
including under grammar the study (but a restricted 
one) of Latin authors. 

All the facts known to us seem to support the view 
I have set forth. For example, William of Champeaux 
delivered his lectures first in the episcopal palace, and 
afterwards removed to the Priory of St. Victor on the 
other side of the Seine. Abelard, too, seems to have 
lectured in the episcopal palace till he had to take 
refuge on the hill of St. Genevieve. Thereafter, the 
arts school specially attached to the cathedral broke 
up and took other quarters, theology and the Decree 
alone continuing to be taught there. Then, after the 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, 155 

formation of the students Into nations, four balls were 
erected by the four nations respectively, where the 
students of each nation received instruction. But, 
outside these halls, any licentiate {i.e. master) might 
hire a room and advertise his lectures ; and thus in 
the course of time arose the Quartier Latin, so 
called because inhabited almost solely by masters 
and scholars. There were hundreds of masters. In 
1348 there were 514 actu regentes in arts alone, not to 
speak of other faculties. There were no special uni- 
versity buildings. Even for their great assemblies the 
authorities had to borrow the Church of St. Maturin. 

The scholars who frequented these various schools 
were very numerous, but they were also, as I have said, 
very young. In the thirteenth century Bulaeus tells us 
that it was necessary to pass a statute excluding from 
the university all under twelve years of age. The 
fact that the mediaeval universities of Oxford and 
Paris included in their organization the work of 
grammar schools explains the large attendance at 
these seats of learning. Accordingly, when we hear 
of twenty thousand or thirty thousand students,* 
we have to bear in mind that boys came to these 
university centres to receive secondary instruction, 
which terminated with the bachelor's degree. It has 

* Some are disposed to throw doubt on these large numbers. 
Dollinger, however ("Die Universitaten sonst und jetzt'"), quotes 
the general procurator, Arnauld, for the number (20,000 to 30,000) 
at a much later period, when there were rival universities. 



156 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

also to be noted that the personal attendants of the 
wealthier students, and the college cooks and servitors, 
were matriculated as cives, in order that they might 
share the privileges and protection of person, which 
were extended by royal charter or papal bull to the 
universitas as a whole. We are not to conclude 
that a large proportion of these students went for- 
ward either to professional or scientific studies. It 
was, in fact, partly with a view to retain men, after 
graduation, in the interests of learning and science, that 
collegiate foundations arose, and partly for the purpose 
of providing gratuitous maintenance for poor scholars. 
These objects of collegiate foundations have been too 
often forgotten by Oxford and Cambridge. Every 
pursuit outside the professional or money-making 
had, in mediaeval times even more than in our own, to 
be artificially fostered. But even in these days, it is 
generally believed that the scientific investigator, in 
the field of either matter or mind, has not so good 
a chance of obtaining recognition at our English 
universities as those who possess, not knowledge, but 
a mere instrument of knowledge in the shape of a 
minute acquaintance with the tongues in which Latins 
and Greeks wrote. 

As to the study of Law in Paris : I have pointed 
out that instruction had frequently been given in the 
monastery schools in the Theodosian Code after the 
seventh century, and that Charlemagne to some extent 
revived the study. When we see it stated that the 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, 157 

canonists in the beginning of the twelfth century 
taught civil law in Paris, this teaching (if prior to the 
death of Irnerius, 1 138?) must have been of a very 
fragmentary kind. The Church, in fact, never looked 
with favour on the study of the civil law at Paris. 
It was regarded by others than ecclesiastics as lower- 
ing the scientific character of universities, and as 
training a class of mere practitioners. It is on the 
surface, too, that the Church could not look with 
much favour on the rise of a rival to the canon 
law. The civil law is the law of the civ is ; it is 
the law of the state, not of the Church, and is the 
bulwark of liberty. At Paris, above all — the centre 
of theological thought and ecclesiastical jurisprudence 
— it was felt to be necessary to protest against the 
intruder. Accordingly Pope Honorius III. (1216- 
1227) prohibited the teaching of it in Paris; and it 
was authoritatively taught there only after 1679. 
Meanwhile it was the specialty of Orleans and other 
towns of France and also of Italy. 

Medicine was not taught at Paris during the 
twelfth century. John of Salisbury, writing as late 
as 1 160, says that those who desired to study 
medicine had to go to Salernum or Montpellier. 
But the names of distinguished physicians occur in 
the Parisian records after this date, and the subject 
was formally taught not later than 1 200. Degrees or 
licences in medicine were conferred in 1231. 

Thus by the year 1200 we find Paris an active 



158 MEDIALVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

and flourishing high school of theology (this subject 
still classed, however, as one of the liberal arts), ol 
arts, canon law, and medicine, and organized as a 
universitas ^magistrorum, with a more or less lax 
organization of the students into nations. At the 
same time, the silence of Robert de Courgon, the 
papal legate sent to settle differences that had arisen, 
leads to the conclusion that canon law and medicine 
had not in 12 15 assumed any prominence in the uni- 
versity work. "The foundations of the university^" 
says Bonaventura, " were laid in arts ; law and physics 
were the walls, and divinity the roof of the academic 
system." The formation of the faculties will be 
referred to in a subsequent lecture. 

Privileges. — In evolving itself, the rising studium 
generale school carried, I say, with it the privileges of 
the Paris arts school. How else can we explain the 
reference to " ancient " privileges by Pope Alexander 
III. (11 59)? But it also carried with it the superin- 
tendence of the Chancellor of Notre Dame. In the 
future history of the universitas, the question of the 
respective rights of the universitas inagistrortim et 
scholarhun and the chancellor were a matter of con- 
stant contention, until the latter were restricted to the 
merely formal conferring of degrees. As regards 
further privileges, we do not need a knowledge of 
the facts to understand what a consortium magis- 
trorum, with a large and increasing number of students, 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 159 

would seek to acquire. They would naturally assume 
and demand the recognition of their inner autonomy 
and their control over the testing of the qualifications 
of those who sought to join them. They would also 
seek protection from the interference of alien powers 
such as already was possessed by the clerus ; and if 
they could not secure endowments, they would yet 
seek to obtain such immunities from public service 
and from taxation as had been possessed by the 
sophists and orators of the Roman empire, as well 
as by the Church. In default of liberal local recogni- 
tion of their presumed rights, they would go to king, 
emperor, or pope, and so transfer their allegiance from 
the civic to the civil power, and if necessary from the 
civil to the supreme ecclesiastical authority — the pope. 
And this is precisely what the early universitates did. 
The privileges which they gradually acquired 
were due in Paris, as in Bologna and elsewhere, 
to two causes — the desire to foster learning, and 
the desire of the civic authorities to give dignity 
to their town, and to attract students who came in 
such numbers as to be of great value to local trade. 
But larger and more liberal views prevailed among 
governing men. " We owe," says Frederic Barbarossa 
in 1 1 58, "our protc tion to all our subjects, but above 
all to those whose knowledge enlightens the world, 
and whose teachings instruct our people in their duty 
to obey God and us who are the ministers of the 
divine power." 
13 



i6o MEDJMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

The circumstances which led to a ratification and 
further extension by Phih'p Augustus, in 1200, of the 
privileges already enjoyed by the University of Paris 
under the edicts of Louis VII. and the Papal Letters, 
or simply assumed without being questioned, are 
worth relating as throwing light on the way in which 
the earliest universities acquired an extension of their 
immunities and prerogatives, and became independent 
and autonomous communities. The servant of a 
member of the university (the Archdeacon of Liege) 
having been sent to fetch wine for his master, 
quarrelled with some one in the tavern, was beaten, 
and had his flask broken. As both servant and 
master belonged to the English nation, a crowd of 
students of this nation attacked the tavern-keeper's 
house, and left him for dead. The Paris citizens, 
with the provost at their head, rose to take vengeance, 
and, attacking the English boarding-house or hostel, 
slew several of the inmates, including the member of 
the university who had sent for the wine. The 
teachers of the university at once indignantly sought 
satisfaction from the king ; and he, fearing that the 
masters and their scholars would leave Paris in 
disgust, punished the provost of the town and his 
subordinates with great severity, and gave fresh 
privileges to the university which should protect them 
from all such exercises of civic authority in the 
future. The popes, too, supported this view of 
university privilege, and even restricted (though not 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. i6i 

till afterwards, In the time of Honorlus III., after- 
wards confirmed by Gregory IX.) the episcopal 
power of excommunicating members of the Uni- 
versity of Paris without the approval of the Holy 
See being first obtained. Thus the university was 
protected in its privileges on both sides — the civic 
and the ecclesiastical. In 1229, under Gregory IX., 
we find the chancellor finally restricted to the formal 
and purely ministerial act of granting the licentia. 
^ "What rendered the University of Paris especially 
powerful [but Paris was no exception to other 
schools], nay, positively formidable, was," says Savigny, 
*' its poverty. The university itself, the faculties, the 
nations, were one and all of them poor, and even the 
colleges, burdened with many expenses, could by no 
means be described as wealthy. The university did 
not possess so much as a building of its own, but 
was commonly obliged to hold its meetings in the 
cloisters of friendly monastic orders. Its existence 
and power thus assumed a purely spiritual character, 
and was rendered permanently independent of the 
temporal authority." * 

The next most important events, after the ex- 
tension of privileges by Philip Augustus in 1200, 
were unquestionably the disruption of 1229 and the 
separation of the theological faculty from that of 
arts ; or rather, let us say, the formal institution, 

* Quoted by Mr. Kirkpatrick, p. 205. 



i62 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

for the first time, of a specific theological faculty, 
which took place in 1270. I say the "formal" in- 
stitution, for the " Littera universitatis magistrorum et 
scholarium Parisiis studentium" of 1254 recognizes 
the existence of four faculties— theology, canon law, 
medicine, and philosophy — comparing them to the 
four rivers of Paradise. It was only after this date, 
however, that they had a formal existence. 

The disruption to which we have above alluded, 
and which preceded the formal institution of the theo- 
logical faculty by forty years, was caused by a town- 
and-gown riot, in which Queen Blanche, under the 
advice of the bishop and the papal legate, unfortu- 
nately opposed the university, and indeed committed 
herself to the infliction of unmerited castigation on 
certain students. The provost of Paris, proceeding to 
punish the students, under her direction, attacked them 
while at their games outside the city, and slew several 
who had taken no part in the previous riot. The uni- 
versity authorities were violently excited : they de- 
manded satisfaction, and, this having been refused, a 
large number of masters and their pupils left Paris 
in disgust, and settled at various younger university 
seats which had begun to arise in France, such as 
Orleans and Toulouse, and even reopened indepen- 
dent schools at Angers, Poitiers, and Rheims. The 
English portion of the university went to Oxford and 
Cambridge, and Henry III. took advantage of the 
opportunity to invite the foreign masters also to with- 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 163 

draw to England and take refuge under his protection. 
It is said that not a single master of any eminence 
remained in Paris. Notwithstanding the efforts of 
kings and bishops, including the thunder of excom- 
munication, Paris never quite recovered from this 
secession. But other towns gained by it, and Meiners 
(I think rightly) is of opinion that it was the 
migration to Oxford at this time which first converted 
Oxford into an "university," in the full sense of 
the term as understood in France and Italy. Those 
who, yielding to royal and papal pressure, ultimately 
returned to Paris, did so only on receiving the most 
solemn promises that satisfaction would be given. 
And as the Bishop and Chancellor of Paris had been 
among the chief offenders, the pope (Gregory IX.) 
restricted in all time coming the powers previously 
exercised by them over the university, but astutely 
made it, at the same time, more dependent on himself. 
We learn from this secession (and from those of 
Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge, and Prague) that the 
early universities regarded themselves as autonomous 
organizations ; that they consisted, in their own 
opinion, merely of a community or universitas of 
teachers and scholars, electing their own governors, 
regulating their own studies, and promoting their own 
candidates for degrees, without the necessary inter- 
vention even of a chancellor. 

The Nations. — I have already had to refer to the 
"nations" in general terms. Natural and obvious 



i64 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. . 

causes led to the formation of these, at Paris as at 
Bologna ; but, like every other part of the university 
organization, it was not till the beginning of the 
thirteenth century that they took their well-known 
historical form. All the students belonged to one or 
other of four nations — the Picard, the Norman, the 
French (which embraced Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, 
and Orientals), and the English (which embraced the 
English, Irish, Germans, Poles, and all others from 
the north of Europe). The " English " nation was 
subsequently called the German, probably because 
the secession from Paris and the growing fame of 
Oxford and Cambridge had lessened the proportion 
of students from England. The subdivisions of the 
nations were determined by the localities from which 
the students and masters came. Each subdivision 
elected its own dean, and kept its own matricula- 
tion-book and money-chest. The whole " nation " 
was represented, it is true, by the elected procurator ; 
but the deans of the subdivisions were regarded as 
important officials, and were frequently, if not always, 
assessors of the procurators. The procurators, four 
in number, were elected, not by the students as in 
Bologna and Padua, but by the students and masters. 
Each nation with its procurator and deans was an 
independent body, passing its own statutes and 
rules, and exercising supervision over the lodging- 
houses of the students. They had each a seal as 
distinguished from the university seal, and each pro- 



UNIVERSITY OF FARIS. 165 

curator stood to his " nation " in the same relation as 
the Rector did to the whole universitas. The Rector, 
again, was elected by the procurators, who sat as his 
assessors, and together they constituted the governing 
body ; but this for purposes of discipline, protection 
and defence of privileges chiefly, the consortium 
magistrorum regulating the schools. But so indepen- 
dent were the nations that the question whether each 
had power to make statutes that overrode those of 
the universitas, was still a question so late as the 
beginning of the seventeenth century. 

The complete organization of the nations, I have 
said, did not exist till the beginning of the thirteenth 
century. There were nations in the form of spon- 
taneous aggregations of students for mutual help and 
protection as early as the middle of the twelfth 
century, but there is no evidence that they had the 
formal constitution which I have briefly sketched' 
till 1 200- 1 2 20.* The Rector was originally head of the 
nations only as such, and as they existed for purposes 
of discipline and protection, he had consequently 
at first no authority in the general government of 
the university. His power was greatly increased 
when he became, not only Rector of the nations, but 
also of the Arts faculty, which he did before 1274, 
It is first in 1341 that he appears as head of the. whole 

* According to Denifle, p. 106. I have deleted in my proof what 
I had said on the subject of "nations" in deference to the irresistible 
argument of this author. See preface to these lectures. 



i66 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

university, and that the form " Nos rector et universitas 
magistrorum et scholarium," is used. Long before 
that, the Chancellor, who was the original official head 
of the universitas, had been restricted to the conferring 
of degrees. 

That Paris should have been regarded throughout 
the Middle Ages as the mother of universities arose 
mainly from its cultivation of philosophy. For 
philosophy was then understood in a wide sense, 
including the rational interpretation of the phenomena 
of both mind and matter. A philosophical course 
thus afforded in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 
the widest possible culture. It was free from all 
professional and technical aims, except in so far as 
it ministered to theology, out of which it indeed 
arose, and for which the whole arts course was a 
preparation. When the separation of the specifically 
theological teaching took place, all the remaining 
studies continued to be classed, as formerly, under 
the common name of " arts." That the faculty was 
called the Faculty of *'Arts" andvnot of " Philosophy," 
arose out of the historical continuity of the university 
with the old school of arts under William of Cham- 
peaux. In Germany the Faculty of Arts is to this 
day called the Faculty of Philosophy, and includes 
the pure sciences. 

At the beginning of the fourteenth century an 
university was regarded as incomplete which did 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 167 

not provide for instruction and graduation in all four 
faculties at least, and hold from the pope or some 
royal or imperial authority the power of doing so ; 
though, as a matter of fact, Bologna did not possess 
a faculty of theology till 1360, nor Padua till 1363. 
But in their beginnings the universities were wholly 
specialist schools, generally absorbing, however, into 
their teaching-organization the work of the local 
cathedral or municipal schools of arts. 

Montpcllier was the first great rival of Salernum 
as a medical school, though law also was from the 
first taught there. It became an university by charter 
in 1229. Toulouse dates as an university (or formally 
privileged school) from 1228. Orleans was late in 
obtaining formal recognition, not indeed till 1305, 
although it had been to all intents and purposes an 
university of civil law for a hundred and fifty years 
before this. 

There were also schools of law at Cahors, Angers, 
and Bourges. 

When we cast a retrospect over the past history and 
argument, we see, in the midst of some complexity of 
detail, certain things which stand out conspicuously 
and fix our attention. While recognizing the germ of 
the universities in the already existing arts schools, we 
yet see that the new institutions, in so far as they had 
the making of universities in them, early assumed 
a distinctive or specialized character. We further see 



168 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

that they were commonwealths of learning, which 
simply assumed certain rights and privileges after- 
wards confirmed. The humblest student was a 
member of this commonwealth. Multitudes of regents 
may be almost said to have touted for pupils : these 
they carried forward to their first degree, and thereafter 
lectured to them as candidates for the mastership. 
The students led a free and uncontrolled life, seeking 
and finding .protection in their own university authori- 
ties even from the civil power. There was an iwperium 
in imperio. Every student had to be enrolled with 
some magister, but, subject to this, there was great 
freedom. The community was a respicblica literaria 
in the fullest sense, and chose its own governors and 
regulated its own police as well as its own education. 
Any attempt to interfere with the complete autonomy 
of the university was stoutly resisted. 

"It would be," says Savigny,* "altogether erro- 
neous were we to look on the earliest universities 
of the Middle Ages as educational institutions in our 
modern sense — as foundations in which a monarch 
or a town might have in view the provision of in- 
struction for a native population, the admission of 
strangers being, however, recognized. It was not so. 
A teacher inspired by a love of teaching gathered 
round him a circle of scholars eager to learn. Other 
teachers followed, the circle of listeners increased, and 
thus by a kind of inner necessity an enduring school 
♦ "Geschichte des Romischen Rechts," xx. 58. 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 169 

was founded. How great must have been the reputa- 
tion and influence of such a school at a time when 
they were but few in number throughout Europe, and 
when oral instruction was nearly the only path to 
corrkprehensive knowledge ! How great the pride of 
the professors, how great the enthusiasm of the scholars, 
who perhaps had traversed Europe to spend long years 
in Paris and Bologna ! " 

Again, "the distinguishing traits of the student- 
life," says Le Clerc, speaking of Paris,* " the memories 
of which survived with singular tenacity, were poverty, 
ardent application, and turbulence. The students in 
the faculty of arts — 'the artists' — whose numbers in 
the fourteenth century, partly owing to the reputation 
of the Parisian trivuim and qiiadrivium^ and partly 
in consequence of the declining ardour of the theo- 
logians, were constantly on the increase, were by no 
means the most ill disciplined. Older students, those 
especially in the theological faculty, with their fifteen 
or sixteen years' course of study, achieved in this 
respect a far greater notoriety. At the age of thirty 
or forty the student at the university was still a 
scholar. This, indeed, is one of the facts which best 
explain the influence then exercised by a body of 
students and their masters over the affairs of religion 
and of the state. However serious the inconvenience 
and the risk of thus converting half a great city into 
a school, we have abundant evidence how great was 
♦ •* ^tat des Lettres au xiv^ Siecle," i. 269, quoted by Mullinger. 



I70 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

the attraction exercised by this vast seminary, where 
the human intellect exhausted itself in efforts which 
perhaps yielded small fruit, though they promised 
much. To seekers for knowledge the whole of the 
Montagne Latine was a second fatherland. The 
narrow streets, the lofty houses, with their low arch- 
ways, their damp and gloomy courts, and halls strewn 
with straw, were never to be forgotten ; and when, 
after many years, old fellow-students met again at 
Rome, or at Jerusalem, or on the fields of battle where 
France and England stood arrayed for conflict, they 
said to themselves, Nos fiihmts siinul in Garlandia ; 
or they remembered how they had once shouted in 
the ears of the watch the defiant menace, Allez an clos 
BriineaiL* voiis fronverez a qui purler ! " 



Note. — The constitution of the University of Paris, given by Crevler 
as existing in his own time (1761), had been for so long substantially the 
same as he gives it, that it may well be inserted here as a help to a 
knowledge of the constitution of universities generally. 

SCHEME OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 

The University of Paris is composed of seven companies, viz. : 

The Faculty of Theology, with the oldest of its secular doctors for its 
chief, under the name of dean. 

The Faculty of Law, which had been established for canon law only, 
but which is authorized by the Ordinance of 1679 to teach civil law also. 
It has its dean, who is chosen aniiually from its professors, following the 
order of seniority. 

The Faculty of Medicine, which has an elected dean whose office 
lasts two years. 

• The head-quarters of the schools of arts and canon law. 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, 171 

The Nation of France. 

The Nation of Picardy. 

The Nation of Normandy. 

The Nation of Germany, formerly of England. 

These four Nations have each their chief, who is called procurator, 
and is changed yearly. 

All these together form the Faculty of Arts ; but they no less consti- 
tute four distinct communities, each of which has its vote in the general 
affairs of the university. 

The rector chosen by the Nations or their representatives, and drawn 
from the body of the Faculty of Arts, is chief of the whole university 
and chief of the Faculty of Arts especially. 

Three principal officers who are perpetual, viz. : 

The Syndic — the Secretary and Registrar — the Treasurer f^all three 
officers of the university, and all three drawn from the Faculty of Arts. 



172 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 



LECTURE X. 

TPIE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 

The Terms "Studium Genfrale" and *• Universitas'*— 
University Constitutions, etc. 

I HAVE endeavoured in past lectures to show, by 
reference to the three primary institutions — Salernum, 
Bologna, and Paris — how universities gradually came 
into existence as the expression of the reviving 
intellect of Europe, and for the satisfaction of new 
intellectual and social needs. Incidentally I have 
had to sketch the fundamental constitution of these 
first universities ; and in doing so, I have had, by im- 
plication at least, to interpret the nature of the con- 
stitutions by reference to their historical origins. From 
what has been said, it seems to follow that the notes 
of an university or studium generale are three: (i) 
That, whatever else it may include, it is a specialized 
school for men open to all ; (2) that there is free 
teaching and free learning ; (3) that it is a free 
autonomous organization of teachers and scholars. 

We shall best extend our view of mediaeval uni- 



THE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 173 

verslties bv an historical explanation of certain 
words : — 

Stiidmm Generate or Publicum. — In a document 
addressed to Lewis the Pious, two or three years after 
the death of the great Charles, the bishops suggest 
the erection of scholce ptiblicce. At that time monas- 
tery schools, interior and exterior, existed, and epis- 
copal or cathedral schools were to be found at most 
of the episcopal seats. We are not to conclude that 
the bishops were aiming at the institution of some- 
thing different from either, and that they had in view 
specially lay schools such as the palatine. All they 
aimed at was an increase in the number of those 
schools, which would give to all who chose to attend 
them, and not to ecclesiastics only, instruction in the 
liberal arts. Dr. Specht is of opinion that a "schola 
publica" meant a school which was not confined to 
the training of monks or of the clergy, but which 
afforded a wider curriculum in the arts (trivium and 
quadrivium) than was considered necessary for the 
ordinary preparation of the ecclesiastic. The liberal 
arts were sometimes spoken of as studia publica 
(Specht, p. 37). A schola publica might thus be any 
episcopal or monastery school, provided it was practi- 
cally a gymnasium, and as such had retained, or rather 
revived, the traditions of those provincial high schools, 
which had been instituted by the Roman emperors in 
the first and second centuries, and fostered by their 
successors. There seems to be no doubt that at a 



174 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

schola publica^ a liberal course was given, but there 
can be as little doubt that the original signification 
of the word was simply " open to all." Accordingly, 
the word "publicum" was soon used with a twofold 
meaning. A "schola publica" was an arts school, 
and therefore a public school ; a public school, and 
therefore an arts school. 

It would appear that the new term "studium" 
arose only in the period immediately preceding the 
birth of universities, the addition publicum being 
understood. What we have for centuries called 
"universities" were first called sometimes '' scJioIce!' 
sometimes " universitates " with the addition of the 
words "magistrorum et scholarium." The name 
" studium generale " does not seem to have been used 
till the thirteenth century, and it meant simply a 
place where one or more of the liberal arts might be 
prosecuted, and which was open to all who chose to 
go there and study, free from the canonical or monas- 
tic obligations and control ; but the term " generale " 
did not convey that the liberal arts generally were 
taught. The name " studium generale," however, ere 
long succeeded to the double meaning which had be- 
longed to "studium publicum," and meant both a 
school for liberal studies and a school open to all. 
When, therefore, Mr. Anstey (" Monumenta Aca- 
demica," Introd.), following others, translates generale 
as "a place of general resort for students," he takes 
a partial view of the meaning of the term as popularly 
wider stood by those who used it 



THE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 175 

At Rome and Alexandria and Constantinople, to 
teach "publicly" was to teach in places of common 
resort and open to all, such as tlie exedi'ce of a palace 
or temple, as opposed to teaching in one's own house. 
This appears from the Valentinian edict regarding 
the school of Constantinople referred to in the first 
lecture. 

Universitas. — The term " universitas " had no 
connection with " universale," and did not, any more 
than the word " generale," carry with it any reference 
to the universality of the curriculum of study. This 
is now beyond all question. It was again and again 
formally applied by popes and kings to institutions 
which made no pretension to teach the circle of 
knowledge. Mr. Anstey scarcely exaggerates when 
he says that " vestra universitas " in a papal rescript 
may often be translated simply "all of you." In 
running over the works of John of Salisbury, I find 
a letter (cclxi.), written in 1 168 to the Conventus 
of the Ecclesia Cantuariensis, which begins thus.: 
" Universitati sanctorum qui in prima Britanniarum 
sede . . . Domino famulantur," etc. In fact, the 
term "universitas" was in the earlier part of the 
Middle Ages applied to towns or commtinia regarded 
as organized bodies ; hence its application by John 
of Salisbury to a conventus. As applied to a studium, 
it simply meant a community, the word being in 
the course of time restricted to a learned com- 
munity — a universitas liter aria. We learned in a 
14 



176 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

previous lecture that in Bologna the general tini- 
versitas of students divided itself into two sections — 
the tmiversitas tdtrainontanonim and the wiiversitas 
citramontanortim. 

When the popes issued letters of privilege to an 
university, they addressed it (as did Frederick in the 
case of the University of Naples, founded by him) as 
a wiiversitas (or community) doctortim et scholariiun. 
Now, the mere epistolary recognition of these com- 
munities, by pope or monarch, as possessing certain 
privileges and internal rights of self-government, was 
practically their incorporation, and the term "uni- 
versitas " thus gradually acquired the signification of 
".incorporated community," at about the same time 
that it began to be restricted to learned institutions. 
The use of the term " universitas " by the pope was in 
no way influenced by the number of "faculties" or 
subjects in a Schola or Studium. The designation 
which corresponded to universitas as understood in 
more modern times was, in the thirteenth century, as I 
have stated, studium generale, and a studium generale 
might contain one or more universitates, e.g. uni- 
versitas artistarum, universitas juristarum, etc. The 
earliest of the universities which did not grow, but 
was from the first founded^ after older universities had 
fully developed their own constitutions, was that 
of Prague in 1347, and by that time the words 
"studium generale," which originally meant only a 
general and specialized school open to all, and 



THE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 177 



where public courses of lectures were delivered, 
had come to hold the secondary meaning of a 
school which comprehended all the recognized 
"faculties." 

The word "university" (unlversitas magistrorum 
et scholarium), it is interesting to note, was the 
word first used in official documents to designate 
the rising schools as differentiated from the studium 
or schola of the eleventh century, and, after passing 
through various connotations, it is now again always 
used. 

Constitutions. — In the eleventh century the towns 
in Italy and France were reviving or initiating their 
municipal constitutions, and seeking and obtaining 
charters which gave the right of free popular govern- 
ment, and independence of feudal and episcopal 
interference. Nor was this all : for within the munici- 
palities themselves, the various trades were forming 
themselves, under the free impulse of a desire for self- 
government and self-defence, into guilds. Each trade 
elected its own administrators from among the masters 
in the trade. Whether they had formally obtained 
corporate rights or not, they assumed these, and had 
them afterwards recognized by the municipal or civil 
power. They acquired and administered property. 
Moreover, through their "jurors " or " syndics " they 
not only enforced the rules of the trade on their own 
members, but they exercised civil, and in some cases 
even aimed at exercising criminal, jurisdiction. This 



17S MEDL^VAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

last they tried to exercise in defiance of municipal 
authority, but they were soon compelled to restrict 
their jurisdiction to matters bearing on the rules of 
their crafts. The jurors acted as arbitrators between 
master and man, saw that the quality of work- 
manship was kept up, received taxes from members 
of the guild, examined apprentices, and initiated 
"masters." These jurors (sometimes called syndics, 
elders, guards, or wardens) were elected by the votes 
of the members of the craft. The spirit of democratic 
freedom was particularly strong in the Italian muni- 
cipal republics, and, in Bologna especially, the guilds 
exhibited a feverish activity in the eleventh century. 
In the thirteenth century we find them confederated 
there under one powerful head. It was usual to call 
the head of a guild "rector," and when there grew 
up a federation, the general head was called "rector 
societatum." 

Let us now turn from the guilds and look at 
a studium generale in the twelfth century. Dis- 
tinguished teachers have drawn round them from 
every part of Europe thousands of ardent pupils. 
These are supposed to be all working to obtain some 
learned or professional qualification, and they move 
among each other in a spirit of great freedom, and 
animated by a common purpose. Buildings and 
laboratories do not exist. The master or doctor- 
regents teach where and when they can — generally 
in their own houses or hired rooms, or sometimes 



THE * CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 179 

(as in Paris) in the lodging-houses called " hostels," 
belonging to the English or Picard, or some other 
nationality. The students lead an almost uncon- 
trolled life, which too often tends to become a 
licentious and lawless one. In Paris and Oxford 
a large number are mere boys; in Bologna and 
Padua, as students of law, they are of more mature 
years. 

Some sort of organization is manifestly needed, 
especially as the numbers increase. The practice 
of the free trade-guilds is present to the mind, and 
indeed to the eyes, of all. The students coming from 
the same quarter naturally stand together, and by 
the help of the masters of the same nationality con- 
stitute societies or nations, and at once proceed to elect 
their own chief. In Bologna, where the nations num- 
bered thirty-six in all, each nation elects a consiliarius, 
and as the interests of foreigners might somiCtimes 
clash with those of Italians, the nations coming from 
beyond the Alps combine into one large universitas 
of Ultramontanes, while the Italians combine into a 
universitas of Citramontanes. Each universitas, with 
the help of its own consiliarii, then elects its rector, 
and h6 and they quietly assume such powers of 
government and claim such rights as they see 
exercised by the guilds around them. In Paris 
they aggregate themselves into four nations, but, 
owing to the great youth of the students, it is the 
" masters " who control the organisation. It is they 



iSo MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

who elect the procurators,* who again elect the 
rector, and together they constitute the governing 
body for all purposes of discipline and protection 
until the rise of separate faculties leads to the intro- 
duction of the decani or deans. Emanating from 
these authorities, statutes are from time to time 
passed for the regulation of the students, houses, 
funds, etc. They assume corporate rights, as did 
the guilds, and these in the course of time become 
recognized by pope, king, or emperor. 

Meanwhile the masters also form a consortium 
gradually breaking up into " faculties," and in Bologna 
strengthening themselves as collegia, f They regulate 
the studies and degrees. 

The literary universitates are lay in their character, 
like the guilds. They keep monks out of the rector- 
ship, and are as jealous of the local episcopal inter- 
ference as they are of civic control or of royal 
intrusion. As difficulties arise, they desire to protect 
themselves, as did constantly the monastic com- 
munities, from local tyranny, and they seek pro- 
tection from the pope as the universal father. Hence 
rescripts from Rome, acknowledging existing rights 
and privileges, and conferring new ones. The early 
universities were thus learned guilds which, soon after 



* Denifle seems to say that the students had a vote. Surely not 
those under the degree of baccalaureus ? 

t It is scarcely necessary to say that a collegium may exist without 
a building. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. i8i 

their rise, begin to look to the pope (nothing loath) 
to shield them from both the ecclesiastical and civil 
power. Given the conditions which I have explained, 
this early organization was all quite simple and natural 
and obvious. The Rectors (not at first, but ultimately) 
exercised, along with their procurators in Paris and 
their consiliarii in Bologna, great and almost arbitrary 
power. They were assigned a high social position, 
and in some cases on great occasions took precedence 
even of archbishops and cardinals. 

Cardinal Newman, in his " Historical Studies/' 
points out that even so early as the time of the pre- 
Christian schools of Athens there was a classification 
of the students into nations. Students would in those 
days range themselves under som.e sophist who came 
from their own part of the world, and call themselves 
by his name. Again, Viriville (" Hist, de Tin. Pub.") 
says that at the Romano-Hellenic schools in Gaul, in 
the third and fourth centuries, there was a classifi- 
cation into nations, each of which had its proacrator. 
Although these Roman provincial schools may have 
borrowed the practice from Athens, there is no 
evidence that the mediaeval universities were con- 
sciously reviving an ancient practice. Like causes, 
operating in similar circumstances, produce like effects. 
Even at this day a movement very much akin to that 
which led to the formation of nations in mediaeval 
times may be noticed in the University of Edinburgh, 
to which, more than to any other British university, 



i82 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

the colonies send students. Australia and Canada 
have their separate associations, and the students, as 
a body, have a representative council to attend to their 
interests.* 

The Chancellor resident at the university seat 
formally granted the degrees (or granted permission 
to grant them, for this is really what it meant in 
the case of the archdeacon at Bologna), and thus 
had a titular position. He, however, exercised very 
restricted powers at Paris from the first, except over 
the theological, and ultimately scarcely any ; in 
Bologna he was little more than a ceremonial and 
titular official ; but in Oxford and Cambridge he 
was a part of the governing body. An universitas 
was autonomous ; but the chancellor had always a 
certain position which entitles us to say that he at 
least reigned, if he did not govern, and in England 
he governed as well as reigned. Some have wished 
to deduce from the position occupied by this ecclesi- 
astical dignitary- that the universities were originated 
by the Church, while others have as eagerly sought to 
minimize his position and authority in order to main- 
tain the thesis that the universities were a distinctively 
lay or secular development. This discussion arises 
out of a want of historical imagination. We may say 
that the Church originated chivalry as truly as that 
it originated universities. It saw the two social move- 
ments growing up around it out of the needs and 

♦ They also by statute elect the Rector. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 183 

aspirations of the time, and it had no cause to be 
jealous of them ; for all were of the Church, all 
belonged to the community of the faithful. Accord- 
ing to the early mediaeval constitution, we must re- 
member, long before the days of Charlemagne, the 
bishop held high office alongside the lay governor 
of a town — the defensor. The latter was an elected 
head whose functions varied from time to time, but 
who generally seemed to combine in himself many of 
the functions of an English mayor and a French 
prefect. The bishop was, as early as the sixth 
century (at least), an imperial officer for certain 
temporal affairs, and discharged many functions in 
conjunction with the defensor. When Charlemagne 
feudalized the Church at the beginning of the tenth 
century, these secular episcopal powers were increased 
rather than diminished. Indeed, counties were, after 
this date, frequently known by the name of their 
dioceses, not dioceses by those of their counties. It 
was quite natural, therefore, that in seeking for a high 
official who should perform final ceremonial acts, the 
universities should seek the bishop, or, in his place, 
the chancellor of the diocese. Who else was there 
to ask } Moreover, he already exercised educational 
supervision over the cathedral schools of arts, which 
were little more than secondary schools, but yet 
were the highest then known.* In England, and 

* To his precise relation to the licencia docmdi I shall advert in the 
sequel 



i84 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

especially at Cambridge, we see brought distinctly 
into view the ecclesiastical nature and origin of 
the chancellor's functions. These, speaking generally, 
were a mere continuation of power over the scho- 
lastic institutions which preceded universities ; and 
if the earlier universities sought at any time pro- 
tection from local ecclesiastical oppression, they 
went straight to the pope for it, thereby acknow- 
ledging their subordination to the highest Church 
tribunal. So far, then, universities were Church 
institutions. 

And yet, the universities were essentially autono- 
mous lay communities. It would be an anachronism, 
however, to speak of them as being a lay forc« 
antagonistic to the ecclesiastical. There was unques- 
tionably a growth of what may be called lay feeling 
in connection with the rise of universities, and this, 
indeed, was already visible in the order of chivalry ; 
but of actual antagonism to the ecclesiastical power 
there could be none. It is not to be supposed, of 
course, that the popes gave their protection without 
also interfering. But their interposition seems to have 
been very rarely arbitrary. While Rome was not the 
mother, she was yet the nurse of universities, and a 
kindly genial nurse. Honorius III. is said to have 
interdicted the study of medicine at Paris, but it was 
only for monks and the regular clergy that he forbade 
this study, as well as that of civil law ; but in the 
department of medicine the bull became a dead letter. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 185 

Had there been any antagonism between the aims of 
universities and the papal policy, there can be no 
doubt of the immediate result: the infant institutions 
would have been at once and easily crushed out. 
Freedom from monastic restrictions for the new 
commonwealths of learning was never questioned ; 
and these commonwealths themselves wished for 
nothing so much as for the enrolment of their 
members among the clerici, so that thereby they 
might obtain ecclesiastical protection. Why should 
there be any objection on the part of the pope to the 
encouraging of new communities of clerici, who were 
neither monks nor secular priests, but who none the 
less were pursuing studies beneficial to their fellow- 
men, and who were, therefore, promoters of the 
aims of the Church itself — communities which, to 
use the words of Pope Honorius III., were "spreading 
everywhere the salutary waters of its doctrine, and 
irrigating and making fruitful the soil of the Church 
universal"? At any moment the Church could take 
action : its power was supreme and virtually arbi- 
trary : why should it invent restrictive laws ? Laws, 
moreover, are primarily for protection, though they 
may be used for oppression. Where law enters a 
constitution enters, and, with it, freedom. It can 
never be the true interest of a pure despot to make 
laws, for thereby arbitrary power is limited, and the 
decay of despotism has begun. It was not, indeed, 
till the Lutheran reformation that conflict between 



1 86 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

universities and the papal power as hostile forces 
really arose, although long before that, and indeed 
always, the popes kept a watchful eye on possible 
heresies, especially in Paris, and frequently intervened 
in individual cases. Yet, in the main, mediaeval 
universities were regarded as defenders of the faith ; 
and, in return, the universities generally looked with 
confidence to Rome. But while recognizing the papal 
authority in the last resort, they were, yet, self- 
governed republics. To this day Cambridge calls 
ifself in its calendar a " literar}/ republic." 

The Rector actually ruled the university along 
with the consiliarii in Bologna and the procurators 
in Paris, although, in the latter city, the Chancellor 
of the primary theological school at Notre Dame 
continued to exercise certain powers, not very clearly 
defined, over the theological school,* and was at first 
and for long the head of the university. It was only 
by degrees that the Rector attained to the first place, 
having first to pass through the stage of being the 
official head of the Arts faculty as well as of the 
nations. 

* In Paris, after 1266, the rector might be elected either by the 
procurators or by four men chosen for this special duty ; and regulations 
made in 1281 evidently contemplated the possibility of the electors not 
being the acting procurators. In these regulations it is ordered that 
the electors hhall be shut up in a room and not allowed to communicate 
with the external world until a wax candle of a prescribed length is 
burned to the socket. If they have not decided by that time, other 
electors are to be chosen. If two of these agree, the outgoing rector is 
to be called in to give his vote with them, and so make a majority. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 187 

Thus the Church allowed to grow up — nay, fos- 
tered — specialized schools of learning with republican 
constitutions, each of which, as it embraced a new 
faculty, became more and more powerful, until at last, 
combined, they led the thought of Europe, revived in 
men an interest in speculation, led to the asking of 
endless questions, and initiated that scientific spirit 
which finally rendered the Church in its mediaeval form 
for ever impossible as a Church universal. Out of this 
movement, set in motion by Constantinus and Anselm, 
by Berengar, Roscelin, Abelard, and Irnerius, we may 
fairly say grew the Oxford Reformers of the end of 
the twelfth century ; thereafter, Roger Bacon, Petrarch, 
Dante, Wickliffe, Huss, and, finally, the whole modern 
spirit. As heresies arose, the Church naturally tried 
to tighten its grip of universities, just as the civil 
power did in the face of political heresies. But 
with occasional lamentable defections, the history of 
universities is the history of freedom. The moment 
monasteries became organized, they formed centres 
of resistance to the tyrannical exercise of feudal 
power, and thus contributed to the growth of civil 
freedom quite as much as municipalities ; so, the 
moment the masters of learning became organized, 
they formed potent centres of resistance to ecclesi- 
astical, as well as to civil, despotism. They not only 
upheld, in the main, and notwithstanding occasional 
cowardice, their own corporate rights of free organiza- 
tion and free thought, but they sent out thousands 



188 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

annually to every part of Europe to fill the various pro- 
fessions, animated with some share of the academic 
spirit, and possessed of that virile independence of 
mind which it is one of the chief objects of universities 
to promote. 

Whether or not it will be possible for universities 
ultimately to maintain their freedom under a demo- 
cratic social system, is a grave question. The 
tendency of the democratic spirit is certainly to 
reduce great institutions, whether they be Churches 
or universities, to be tools of dominant though 
temporary opinion, or servants of a central bureau.* 
The importance, in the interests of liberty, of in- 
stitutions endowed with rights and privileges is apt 
to be lost sight of on the occasion of every successive 
wave of fanaticism. Fanaticism is always unhistorical : 
it looks neither to the past nor the future. It has no 
perspective. The present fills its eye and shuts off all 
else. The experience of France is not encouraging, 
where, under democratic influences, the ancient uni- 
versity has become a mere administrative body under 
the direct control of the state, and where the pro- 
fessors and faculties have no independent powers, 
no uniting bond, no common life, and where the idea 
of an autonomous commonwealth, or republic of 
letters, has utterly disappeared. 

* Even in our own days we have seen a radical member of Parlia- 
ment propose to starve out the head of a university because he did not 
agree with him on some passing, but exciting, question of educational 
politics I 



THE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 189 

To sum up : like the guilds of the Middle Ages, 
the university communities were republics, the nations 
being the primary source of power as regards disci- 
pline and privilege, and the masters as regards studies. 
They freely elected their own rulers and judges, and, 
as we shall shortly see, examined and promoted their 
own apprentices. They regulated their own studies 
and their whole inner policy. At Paris, however, 
the " masters " were the true source of power. At 
Bologna and Padua the case was very different, but 
it was to the too democratic constitution of Bologna, 
combined with the municipal narrow-mindedness 
which gave a preference to natives in granting the 
doctorship, that Bologna owed its fall. Even the 
Paris constitution, in which a governing body of 
rector, procurators, and ultimately, also, deans of 
faculty, were elected by the members of the university, 
may seem democratic enough. But lest any one 
should think of drawing an argument from the Paris 
constitution in favour of larger powers being given 
to the graduates of our modern universities than 
they now have, I would point out that the masters 
who elected the university governors were all engaged 
in the business of teaching or administration. The 
Parisian magistri non-regentes had, however, a voice 
in important deliberations ; at least this is to be in- 
ferred from the assembly called in 1259 to consider 
the pope's order to admit members of certain monastic 
orders and the scholars they examined and promoted, 



I90 MEDIAiVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

to the privileges of university teachers. But it was 
only when specially called that the magistri non- 
regeiites took part in the assemblies, and a rule to this 
effect was made in 131 5, at Paris. In the Universities 
of Prague and Vienna — the earliest universities, ex- 
cept Palentia and Naples, formally founded {ab iiiitid) 
— the source of government was more and more 
restricted to the faculties and the masters actually 
engaged in university work. 

As it was in Paris so it was in Cambridge, and 
indeed all universities, with some modifications. 
Dean Peacock (as quoted by Mullinger) says, " The 
enactments of these statutes would lead us to conclude 
that in the earliest ages of the university the regents 
alone, as forming the acting body of academical teachers 
and readers, were authorized to form rules for the 
regulation of the terms of admission to the regency, 
as well as for the general conduct of the system of 
education pursued, and for the election of the various 
officers who were necessary for the administration of 
their affairs. We consequently find that if a regent 
ceased to read, he immediately became an alien to 
the governing body, and could only be admitted to 
resume the functions and exerci:;e the privileges of 
the regency after a solemn act of resumption, accord- 
ing to prescribed forms, and under the joint sanction 
of the chancellor of the university and of the house 
of regents. The foundation, however, of colleges and 
halls towards the close of the thirteenth and beginning 



THE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 191 

of the fourteenth century, as well as the establishment 
of numerous monasteries within the limits of the 
university, with a view to participation in its franchises 
and advantages, increased very greatly the number 
of permanent residents in the university, who had 
either ceased to participate in the labours of the 
regency, or who were otherwise occupied with the 
discharge of the peculiar duties imposed upon them 
by the statutes of their own societies. The operation 
of these causes produced a body of non-regents, con- 
tinually increasing in number and importance, who 
claimed and exercised a considerable influence in the 
conduct of those affairs of the university which were 
not immediately connected with the proper function 
of the regency ; and we consequently find that at 
the period when our earliest existing statutes were 
framed, the non-regents were recognized as forming 
an integrant body in the constitution of the university, 
as the house of non-regents^ exercising a concurrent 
jurisdiction with the honse of regents in all questions 
relating to the property, revenues, public rights, privi- 
leges, and common good of the university. Under 
certain circumstances, also, they participated with the 
regents in the elections ; they were admitted likewise 
to the congregations of the regents, though not 
allowed to vote ; and in some cases the two houses 
were formed into one assembly, which deliberated 
in common upon affairs which were of great public 
moment." 
15 



192 MEDIAIVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

Even to the most republican academic mind of 
mediaeval times, the suf^gestion which we see made 
in these days in Scotland, that university governors 
should be chosen by graduates scattered all over the 
world, who are engaged in pursuits which make it im- 
possible for them to maintain acquaintance with the 
circumstances and needs of their alma mater, would 
have seemed, as it unquestionably is, supremely ridicu- 
lous. Such a system could have only one result, the 
handing over of the graduate vote to a few non- 
regents resident at the university seats. On the other 
hand, it has to be admitted that the professors or 
acting-masters are now so few in number, and have 
so strong an interest in perpetuating what is for 
their own advantage, with which it is always easy 
for human nature to identify the general academic 
welfare, that it is not for the public interest that they 
should exercise more than a restricted power in the 
government. In searching for a governing bod}', 
accordingly, we cannot well do better than base 
it on university citizenship generally, provided we 
secure for the teaching body {inagistri actit regentes) 
sufficient, though not necessarily predominant, power, 
and above all include representatives of the Croivn, 
For I would point out that universities do not exist 
for the localities in which they are situated, but for 
the nation and the empire. 

My conviction is that if the power of the pro- 
fessorial faculties, sitting as a senate or consortium 



THE CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. 193 

magistrorum, were not felt, as it is now in Scotland, 
in every part of the body academic, especially in the 
organization of studies and in examinations, the uni- 
versities would soon degenerate into mere examining 
boards, and the professors be degraded into tutors. 
There would thus be revived the old regenting, the 
abolition of which was the beginning of the philo- 
sophic and scientific life of our northern universities 
more than 150 years ago. 

The Scottish universities are now, it is interesting- 
to note, the only true contirmators of the mediaeval 
organization, for they recognize the following elements 
as constituting the "university" : (i) the students, (2) 
the graduates (or magistri non-regentes), (3) the pro- 
fessors (or magistri regentes), (4) the rector, and (5) the 
chancellor. The supreme governing body is the Court, 
but the body which practically governs — the Court 
having only carefully defined and restricted powers — 
is the Senatus Academlcus ; in other words, the 
principal and the professors of the four faculties. The 
Court, again, draws its members from the students, 
who elect a rector to be head of the Court, he 
further appointing an assessor; from the Senatus, 
whose principal sits in the Court, ex officio, and is 
accompanied by a representative of the Senatus ; from 
the general body of graduates, called the " Council," 
who elect an assessor; and from the Chancellor 
who elects an assessor, but does not himself sit.* 

* In Edinburgh, owing to the traditionary connection of the 



194 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

Any reform of the supreme governing and appellate 
court that would give it increased powers, must, of 
course, be preceded by increasing its numbers and 
influence. This can best be done by increasing the 
representatives of the various constituent elements 
of the university already recognized, adding Crown 
nominees in the general interests of the state. To 
admit representatives of "public bodies" is the be- 
ginning of the end as regards the free and republican 
character of universities. Alien government would 
destroy entirely the Universitas and convert it into 
a college. Better that our old universities should 
become a department of State at once than accept 
such degradation. But let the "people" bear in mind 
that a " department of State " is only another name 
for a political instrument. The autonomy of uni- 
versities is of more importance to the future liberties 
of our country than the autonomy of muncipalities. 

university with the municipality, the provost of the city and a repre- 
sentative of the town council are also members. The Scottish university 
constitution will be seen to be a remaikable survival of mediEeval 
organization, 



LECTURE XI. 

STUDENTS, THEIR NUMBERS AND DISCIPLINE — 
PRIVILEGES OF UNIVERSITIES — FACULTIES. 

When one hears of the large number of students who 
attended the earliest universities — 10,000, and even 
20,000 at Bologna, an equal, and at one time, a 
greater, number at Paris, and 30,000 at Oxford — one 
cannot help thinking that the numbers have been ex- 
aggerated. There is certainly evidence that the Oxford 
attendance was never so great as has been alleged (see 
Anstey's " Mon. Acad.") ; but when we consider that 
attendants, servitors, college cooks, etc., were regarded 
as members of the university community, and that the 
universities provided for a time the sole recognized 
training-grounds for those wishing to enter the ecclesi- 
astical, or legal, or teaching professions, I see no reason 
to doubt the substantial accuracy of the tradition as 
to attendance, — especially when we remember that at 
Paris and Oxford a large number were mere boys of 
from twelve to fifteen years of age. 

The chief objection to accepting the tradition lies 
in the difficulty of seeing how in those days so large 



196 MEDIALVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

a number of the youth of Europe could afford the 
expense of residence away from their homes. This 
difficulty, however, is partly removed when we know 
that many of the students were well to do, that a 
considerable number were matured men, already 
monks and canons, and that the endowments of 
cathedral schools also were frequently used to enable 
promising scholars to attend foreign universities.* 
Monasteries also regularly sent boys of thirteen and 
fourteen to the university seats. A papal instruction 
of 1335 required every Benedictine and Augustinian 
community to send boys to the universities in the 
proportion of one in twenty of their residents. Then, 
State authorities ordered free passages for all who 
were wending their way to and from the seats of 
learning. In the houses of country priests — not to 
speak of the monastery hospitia — travelling scholars 
were always accommodated gratuitously, and even 
local subscriptions were frequently made to help them 
on their way. Poor travelling scholars were, in fact, 
a mediaeval institution, and it was considered no dis- 
grace for a student to beg and receive alms for his 
support. One result of this was, as might have been 
expected, the production of a large number of tramps 
who called themselves students, and who wandered 
about over Europe and lived on the charitable. They 
were little better than sturdy beggars and idle vaga- 

* I am disposed to think that guild funds were also sometimes so 
applied. 



PRIVILEGES AND FACULTIES. 197 

bonds, and as such gave no small trouble to the 
monasteries and towns and villages at which they 
halted.* 

I cannot find that in the first two centuries of 
universities, before the foundation of colleges, students 
were under very strict discipline. They were under 
surveillance, however ; they had to attach themselves 
to some magister, and breaches of university rules 
were sharply punished by the rector. Then the 
larger "nations" were composed of numerous smaller 
sections, which had their own officials, matriculation- 
books and money-chests, and the hostels or boarding- 
houses of these nations had a " master" as superinten- 
dent. There were certainly many scandals and 
much licence — especially, of course, among those who 
frequented Paris and Bologna and Oxford without 
a serious purpose of study. It is this class now which 
alone gives trouble to university authorities, and 
causes, I presume, the maintenance at Oxford and 
Cambridge of rules and restrictions originally framed 
for little boys or licentious youths. It was for dis- 
ciplinary, as well as for literary and charitable objects, 
that colleges within the universities subsequently arose. 

It is interesting and instructive, in this connection, 
to recall the discipline of Rome (and doubtless also 
of Constan-tinople) under imperial rule. The edict 

* Events repeat themselves. Valentinian had to issue an edict 
directed against pseudo-philosophers who frequented the larger provincial 
towns in the end of the fourth century— the wandering sophists. Our 
modern tramp, too, is always a respectable artisan, ** in search of work." 



I9S MEDIALVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

of Valentinlan, issued in 370, makes more explicit a 
system which had existed in more or less force for 
250 years. This edict (Theod. Cod., xiv. tit. ix.), brief 
as it is, may be said to constitute the complete corpus 
of university statutes of imperial times. It first re- 
quires that the young student shall bring with him 
from a provincial judge or the rector of a province 
a certificate of character and of his age and country, 
which shall be presented to the Magister Census. 
This is equivalent to our modern matriculation. He 
must distinctly state what studies he means to pursue, 
and enter himself for these. The censor is required to 
keep a record of lodgings, and to see that they are fit 
places for young lads to live in : he is also to keep 
an eye on their conduct and their associates, and see 
that they do not too much frequent public places of 
amusement, or convivial entertainments. If a student 
misconducts himself, he is to be flogged and put on 
board a ship and sent to his parents. None are allowed 
to continue their studies beyond their twentieth year, 
at which age they have to return to their homes.* 
Monthly inquiries are to be made at the residences 
of the students, and an annual report sent to the 
emperor, that he may know the qualifications of each, 
and judge "utrum quandoque nobis sint neces- 
sarii." This annual report must have been a powerful 
inducement to study, as the commendation of a 

* As the study of law extended over five years, the students must 
have come up very youn^. 



PRIVILEGES AND FACULTIES. 199 

student would lead to his employment in the public 
service.* 

Privileges. — I suppose China and Athens, prior 
to the Roman period, are the only countries which, 
recognizing the importance of education, yet made 
no provision for it by way of either endowment or 
privilege. The former relied, and continues to rely, 
on State examinations, which, if passed, bring State 
employment and social position to an extent not 
dreamt of by the student of the empire or of me- 
diaeval times ; the latter relied on the public spirit of 
the citizens and the supervision of the court of the 
Areopagus. In the former case the result is what 
we see ; in the latter, the " adventure " system suc- 
ceeded because of the restricted field, the genius of 
the Hellenic race, and peculiarly favourable conditions. 

Like many of the characteristics of the earliest 
universities, the privileges conferred had their parallel 
in ancient laws or customs. Among privileges I may 
include fixed salaries paid by the State. Vespasian is 
held to have been the first who ordered to be paid 
out of the public treasury \ salaries to professors at 

* Justinian also held out this inducement. His words were (Prooem. 
Instit.), " Surama igitur ope et alacri studio has leges nostras accipite ; 
et vosmetipsos sic eruditos ostendite ut spes vos pulcherrima foveat, toto 
legitime opere perfecto, posse etiam nostram rempublicam in partibus 
ejus vobis credendis gubernari." 

t The payment made to Quintilian prior to this was rather, I think, 
of the nature of a pension, out of what we should call the " privy purse." 
See, however, the reference to Grafenhahn in Lecture I. 



20O MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

Rome, and in the more important provincial towns. 
Successive emperors confirmed and extended this law, 
doubtless originally suggested by the constitution of 
the Ptolemaic schools of Alexandria. Gratian, so 
late as A.D. 376, also issued an edict regarding the 
salaries of professors {annoncE, stipendia, salaria). 

If not at the time of Vespasian, certainly not 
long after, immunities were also granted. The Medici 
and the professors of liberal arts, who taught in the 
Roman Capitol and large provincial towns, were 
exempted from imperial taxes, from service in war, 
and from discharging municipal duties except when 
they were desirous to do so. These privileges were, of 
course, extended to the University of Constantinople. 
Constantine, in his edict of A.D. 321, continues and 
confirms past privileges as they had existed in all 
parts of the empire {vide Theod. Cod., iii. tit. iii. l). 
He also protects professors from all insult and injury 
by the threat of severe fines to be imposed on 
offenders. These privileges and immunities extended 
to the persons and property of the wives and children. 
In the West, senatorial rank was frequently, if not 
indeed always, conferred on the professors of the 
Capitol. The object of conferring such privileges is well 
summed up in the Theodosian Code, iii. 3 (A.D. 333), 
in the following words : " Quo facilius liberalibus 
studiis et memoratis artibus multos instituant." 

When Christianity was recognized by Constantine, 
he extended these academic privileges to the new 



PRIVILEGES AND FACULTIES. 201 

nation of the Clems. " The whole body of the Catholic 
clergy," says Gibbon, c. xx. (and I may add this in- 
cluded servitors in churches), " more numerous perhaps 
than the legions, was exempted from all service private 
or public, all municipal offices, and all personal taxes 
and contributions which pressed on their fellow- 
citizens with intolerable weight, and the duties of 
their holy profession were accepted as a full discharge 
of their obligations to the republic." Thus the 
immunities of the learned class passed, but in a 
more extended form, to the clerical. 

These privileges of the Clerus continued through- 
out the Middle Ages, and still to some extent survive. 
When the new universities, i.e., communities of teachers 
and scholars, arose, most of the former already be- 
longed to the clergy, and it was natural, on this and 
on other grounds, that they should assume clerical 
privileges for the whole body of scholars, with the 
expectation that the assumption would pass un- 
questioned or be confirmed by pope or prince at some 
future time. To what extent the clergy as individuals 
were free from taxes in the twelfth century I do not 
know ; but the chief privilege, which covered many 
minor ones, was the right of internal jurisdiction, 
which had gradually been acquired under the canon 
law, though not originally contemplated by the Roman 
emperors either of the East or West. We are in these 
days naturally surprised that such things should be 
possible as the exercise of civil and criminal jurisdic- 



2C2 MEDJALVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

tlon over the students by university authorities. But 
when we reaHze that the guilds frequently exercised 
a similar authority over their members, and could 
interpose their protection against the interference of 
either municipal or feudal authority, we should rather 
be surprised if the new guild of scholars and teachers 
had not laid claim to those privileges of internal 
government which they saw existing both in guilds 
and in monastic orders, and in the Church generally, 
" In the Middle Ages," says Freeman,* " every class 
of men, every district, every city, tried to isolate itself 
within a jurisprudence of its own." 

The word " clericus " was accordingly applied, not 
merely to the ministers of the Church and those in 
preparation for the ministry, but to all educated 
persons. Cleric or clerk was opposed, not to the 
laity, but to the illiterate laity. A simple deacon 
or monk was, as such, not a priest.f For the in- 
struction of the laity during the Middle Ages, as we 
have seen, little was done, or, indeed, could be done. 
" Benefit of clergy " meant the right to be judged by an 
ecclesiastical tribunal. Accordingly, when students 
obtained the privilege of being judged by the uni- 
versity authorities alone, this was merely a natural 
extension of a practice already existing within the 
ecclesiastical order. Frederic of Barbarossa granted, 

* "Historical Essays," ist series, p. io8. 

t Thomas a Becket was not a priest till he was appointed to the 
primacy. 



'^ PRIVILEGES AND FACULTIES. 203 

in 1 1 58, to all students, wherever they were, the right 
to be judged coram domino ant magistro suo vel ipsins 
civitatis cpiscopo^ and this privilege was further ex- 
tended even to the postal messengers of students. 
Thus, curiously enough, privileges originally con- 
ferred on scholars had passed to the Church, and 
having been aggrandized in its hands, returned again 
to scholars.* 

Faculties. — The word " faculty" has been sometimes 
regarded with a feeling amounting to superstition, and 
this even by university reformers. It primarily means 
" the power of doing something." To this day, in 
the Church of England, a vicar or rector has to 
obtain a "faculty" from his ecclesiastical superiors 
to effect certain changes. The word, in this ecclesi- 
astical application, is equivalent to dispensation. 
The word " faculty " was originally used (in mediaeval 
times) as equivalent to knowledge, also as equivalent 
to study with a view to special knowledge, and further 
it was applied to any subject of study. In Frederick 
II.'s Neapolitan statutes, those who mean to be merely 
surgeons, and not viedici, are ordered to attend for 
one year the masters qui chirurgice facttltateni in- 
strimnty which I translate as "who instruct in the 
knoivledge of chirurgy." 

* As in the earlier part of the Middle Ages the Roman provincials, 
and the population of Teutonic origin, frequently lived in the same town, 
each under its own laws (Savigny), the separate jurisdiction of universities 
would not appear to contemporaries so inconsistent with social order as 
it does to us. 



204 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

In later times the word was used to denote a 
specific body within the university. Sir W. Hamilton 
defines (" Discussions," p. 490) a "faculty" as a body 
of teachers who had the privilege of lecturing on a 
department of knowledge and of examining in it. 
In this definition Hamilton follows Bulaeus. Du 
Cange more correctly defines it as those teaching and 
studying the same group of subjects. And it is so 
we now popularly regard it. 

Until some time after the bull of Gregory IX., in 
1231, what are now known as distinct ''faculties" 
were all Arts studies. The bull of that year speaks 
of the various studies, including medicine ; but when 
it uses the word " faculty " it uses it as equivalent 
merely to department of knowledge. Medicine and 
law were both originally classed under the general 
head of " liberal arts." The masters of the several 
departments of study, however, had been in the habit 
of meeting for business connected with their depart- 
ment long before they were recognized formally as 
faculties (just as now happens in Edinburgh, in the 
department of science, which is not yet technically a 
faculty) ; and in the "littera universitatis " of 1254, to 
which I have previously referred, the four " faculties " 
are named ; but not in the sense of separate corpora- 
tions. It was the formal constitution of a theological 
"faculty" in Paris apart from the arts faculty, in 
1259-60, which first led to the separate incorporation 
of the other faculties in that university. When faculties 



PRIVILEGES AND FACULTIES. 205 

were at last formally constituted, they were, to all 
intents and purposes, universities within a university. 
Each elected its own dean, and these deans thereafter 
sat as part of the governing body, along with the rector 
and procurators. In 1277, we first, in an act of the 
University of Paris, find the words " with the consent 
of the four faculties." By that time each had its dean 
and seal. The medical faculty had a dean in 1265 — 
always the senior doctor till 1338, after which the Dean 
was an elected officer. 

The rise of faculties naturally broke up the republi- 
can organization as based on " nations " exclusively, 
but that organization never at any time controlled the 
" masters'' in Paris to the extent which it did in Bologna. 
And, indeed, in both places the regulation o{ studies and 
promotions was in the hands of the magistri. Some- 
times there were five faculties, or even six — canon 
law constituting a faculty, as distinct from civil law. 
The only faculties generally recognized in Paris were 
our traditionary four. There is no reason, however, 
why there should not be twenty faculties in a uni- 
versity. Wherever the studies in arts for a degree 
are broken up into specialized sections, there we 
have a "faculty," whether we call it by that name 
or not. In Oxford and Cambridge, Arts students 
can now graduate in half a dozen different ways. Each 
of these ways is really a " faculty ; " nay, we may 
say that each subject is a faculty. There is no reason, 
in the nature of either things or words, why we should 



2o6 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

not speak of the " faculty of English," or the " faculty 
of mathematics/' or the " faculty of Latin." It may, 
perhaps, be better, however, in these days to keep the 
traditional " four faculties," and to institute as many 
" sub-faculties " as the circumstances of a university 
may demand. It is an historical blunder to separate 
the pure sciences from the general designation " arts." 
The words of Bulaeus in defining faculty are, 
FaciUtatis vero nomine quod ad regimen et administra- 
tioneni attinet, intelligimns corpus et sodalitium pliiri- 
niorum magistroriun certce alicui disciplines addictum 
sine ulla distinctione nationis (i. 251). But he after- 
wards (iii. 83) considers it essential to a faculty that it 
should have its own seal, its own private comitia, and 
a caput or decaniis. Meiners further adds that the 
essential prerogative of a faculty was the right to 
examine entrants, and candidates for degrees in its 
own subject or group of subjects. But long before 
"faculties" existed in any formal sense, examinations 
were held and licences (or degrees) conferred in the 
various differentiated subjects of study. At first, the 
several masters of theology, or law, or arts exercised 
the right of examining and of presenting for promotion 
aspirants in their respective departments (this right, 
however, being on some occasions apparently shared 
with the chancellor), and the informal coming together 
of the masters of a subject to promote their candi- 
dates constituted the first germ of a faculty. The next 
step was for the masters to meet to discuss matters 



PRIVILEGES AND FACULTIES. 207 

affecting the studies in which they were specially 
interested ; and finally, the body of masters profess- 
ing a certain subject or group of subjects formally 
constituted themselves, elected a dean or head, and 
began to make statutes, to collect and hold fees, and 
to act in all respects as corporations or universitates 
within the larger corporation of the universitas. 

Thus the rise of faculties was closely connected 
with the teaching and graduation system. Originally 
it would appear that the master who taught or re- 
gented the boy-students also conferred on them the 
B.A. degree. Afterwards, when faculties were organ- 
ized, it was the privilege of each faculty to examine 
their own candidates and to confer the bachelorship. 
The faculty also examined and promoted its licen- 
tiates or masters, the Chancellor being little more 
than the channel through which their decision as to 
the fitness of a candidate was ceremonially confirmed 
and announced. 

I have been speaking chiefly of Paris. In Bologna 
It is uncertain at what date the doctors of civil and 
canon law acted as separate bodies for purposes of 
promotion and other business. They existed as 
separate bodies in the thirteenth century, with the 
designation of " colleges," and were followed by phi- 
losophical, medical, and theological colleges. These 
colleges, corresponding to the Parisian faculties, con- 
sisted of the " masters " alone. The head was always 
called " prior " in Italy, not dean. 
16 



2o8 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

The above statement exhibits generally the rise 
and nature of faculties. The first separation of a 
" faculty " arose in Paris out of a quarrel. Regular 
examinations and promotions had been in operation 
in Paris for nearly a hundred years,* when the 
Franciscan and Dominican monks in 1243 demanded 
that the pupils taught by them in their cloister schools, 
and examined and promoted by them, should be 
admitted as members of the university, and to all its 
privileges. This would seem to have been an attempt 
on the part of what we should in these days call an 
extramural school to constitute itself a part of the 
university, and at the same time to transfer theo- 
logical teaching to the hands of monks. The 
pope supported the claim, and, in spite of the strong 
reluctance of the university, it had ultimately to yield, 
merely securing for Arts precedence in all public acts 
and ceremonies. The monks then entered into a 
union with the secular teachers of theology, and, 
forming with them a separate body, elected a dean 
as their head. This movement to form a "faculty" 
•was now strenuously encouraged by the university 
Arts masters, who were virtually already separated 
into faculties of medicine and arts or philosophy, as 
it more clearly distinguished them from the monkish 
element in the university, which they hated. But the 
immediate result was that the medical masters and 

* According to Meiners (i. 80) ; but the consolidation of the rules 
for promotion occurred in 12 15. 



PRIVILEGES AND FACULTIES, 209 

the masters of canon law formed similar associations, 
each electing its dean. The formation of the theo- 
logical faculty took place in 1259-60, and that of the 
medical faculty must have followed very closely, be- 
cause there existed a medical dean in 1265, and in 
1270 they inflicted a punishment on one of their 
members for the breach of a statute. They, certainly, 
had a seal in 1274. In 1271, the law faculty had a 
seal. The period 1260-70, then, may be fixed as the 
date of the formal constitution, but not the rise, of 
the three faculties of theology, law, and medicine — 
afterwards called the three "higher" faculties, to dis- 
tinguish them from " arts." 

It was not, however, till 1281 that the faculties 
were fully recognized in the sense that their separate 
acts were held to be university acts. 

The above narrative suggests to us the question 
of precedence among the faculties. If this is to be 
determined by the date of their origin, arts has a 
strong claim, as it was out of arts that all the 
specialized schools called universities grew, and 
certainly at Paris it contained within itself the 
specialized schools as artes liberales before there was 
any formal differentiation. But, on the other hand, 
the evidence we have is in favour of Salernum as 
being the earliest school of a really advanced or 
university type,* and of Bologna as being at least 
♦ Unless we date the Paris University from William of Champeaux, 



210 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

contemporaneous with Paris — law with arts. The- 
ology comes last at Bologna, that is to say, as a 
distinct school from arts ; and this in 1260. Ques- 
tions of precedence are, however, to be settled by 
the sovereign or supreme authority from which uni- 
versities hold their title. If we accept the pope as 
supreme authority, we shall find that, in the earliest 
letters addressed to Paris, he names theolc^y first and 
(canon) law next. On the ground of antiquity, and 
of its being one of the so-called " higher " faculties, 
medicine should come third, and arts last of all — the 
studies in arts as far as the baccalaureateship (and for 
theology the mastership) being for centuries regarded 
as preliminary to the studies of the other faculties. 
It might now, however, and with historical truth, be 
urged that the " arts," or, to use the German term, 
the " philosophical," faculty, may be held to embrace 
all studies that have not necessarily any direct pro- 
fessional bearing — such as mathematics, physics, 
chemistry, philology, literature, philosophy, biology, 
geology, history, political economy, etc., and that they 
thus occupy a higher position in the temple of know- 
ledge than subjects directly practical or professional 
in their relations. A difficulty would again, however, 
here present itself. For not only are chemistry and 
botany and zoology regarded as part of professional 
medical training, but so, still more, are physiology 
and anatomy, which yet are pure sciences. Pathology, 
in its modern development, is also a pure science. 



PRIVILEGES AND FACULTIES. 211 

The institutes of law, again, is a purely scientific 
study, but forms part, or ought to form part, of the 
professional equipment of the practising barrister. 
To determine so complex a question on general 
principles would, I suspect, be impossible. His- 
torically, we can only fall back on the terms of 
charters as issued by the sovereign, and on the whole 
question I would refer the reader to the '' History of 
the University of Prague " (vid. seq). 

When the organization reached maturity, there 
existed in Paris the general body of the four nations, 
regarded as the Faculty of Arts, constituting, as such, 
the supreme governing authority of the university, 
and to which all students were held to belong till 
they attained the mastership or doctorship in one of 
the three " higher " faculties, when they seem to have 
ceased to belong to Arts.* From the general adminis- 
tration of the university, the higher faculties were, as 
such, at first excluded ; but they resented this, and 
ere long, as I have shown, they received a governing 
position for their deans side by side with the rector 
and the procurators of nations, and carried on two 
or three centuries of discussion as to the right of the 
primary Faculty of Arts to four votes in public as- 
semblies as representing the ancient four nations. 
(For the final organization, see note appended to 
lecture on Paris.) 

The direct power of the nations in the government 

* But this is doubtful. 



212 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

of the universities was, as we see, seriously affected by 
the constitution of faculties ; but before this, the rise 
of colleges must have had a tendency to divide the 
interests of members of the same nation. 

Before leaving the subject of faculties, it is worth 
while here to point out that, when the papal bulls 
authorized the institution of degrees "in quacunque 
licita facultate," this was not done to restrict the growth 
of faculties, but merely to exclude an " illicit " faculty 
or study, such as necromancy and witchcraft. Among 
the autonomous powers of a university are the consti- 
tuting of faculties and the institution of additional 
regents or professors, except in so far as these powers 
may have been specifically restricted by an act of 
State. 

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, France 
and Italy and England had had considerable expe- 
rience of universities. It was in this centur}^, the 
fourteenth, the epoch of the first reformation and 
revival of letters, that sovereigns began to see the 
importance of founding universities in their own do- 
minions, so as to give to them some of the dignity of 
learning, and to obviate the necessity, up till then im- 
posed on their subjects, of travelling to distant coun- 
tries in order to be trained for the various professions. 
The pope also was, for various reasons, glad of an 
opportunity to lower the troublesome pretensions of 
Paris. In this century, accordingly, fifteen universities 



PRIVILEGES AND FACULTIES, 213 

were founded. In the fifteenth century, twenty-nine. 
Many of these never rose above the position of minor 
colleges, and have since disappeared. If we wish to 
see the conclusions to which the academic mind of 
Europe had been led, after many fluctuations and 
intestine contests, as to the constitution and adminis- 
tration of universities, we cannot do better than look 
at the organization given to the first of the uni- 
versities which was deliberately founded after things 
had settled down — that of Prague. Its organization 
will also, I think, throw a retrospective light on the 
previous history and constitution of the earlier seats 
of learning which had gradually grown up.* 

• If we had the materials, something also might be learned from the 
original organization of the University of Salamanca in Spain, which 
was founded by Alfonso VIII. in 1212-14, in Palentia, and transferred 
before 1230 to its present seat by Alfonso's grandson. But it is probable 
that the University of Naples has already given us all that Salamanca 
would yield. * 

* Denifle seems to regard Palentia and Salamanca as quite separate 
and independent erections. 



214 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 



LECTURE XII. 

GRADUATION. 

This is a difficult and complex subject, but I shall 
endeavour to state, as clearly as the subject admits 
of, the conclusions to which I have come. 

Graduation was, in the mediaeval universities, 
simply the conferring of a qualification and right to 
teach (or, in the case of medicine, to practise), given 
after a certain length of attendance at an university, 
and an examination conducted by those already in 
the position of teachers. 

The earliest reference to a formal qualification for 
the office of instructor known to me is contained in a 
Valentinian edict of 329. The immunities granted to 
oratores and other professors led to the assumption 
of the title by many who wished to share in the privi- 
leges of the professorial class, while wholly without 
claim to belong to it. These pseudo-philosophers, who 
wandered about from one provincial city to another 
and gave themselves great airs, were to be appre- 
hended and sent back to their own countries "exceptis 



GRADUATION. 215 

his qui, a probatissimis adprobati, ab hac debuerunt 
conluvione secerni." It does not appear what steps 
were taken to give effect to this decree. 

In the Theodosian Code the generic title of all 
higher teachers is " professor," but as equivalent to this 
we find the words " magister " and 'Moctor." In one 
edict (Theod. Cod., xiii. iii. 16) the expression "prae- 
ceptor" is reserved for the professor of philosophy, 
the others being designated Grammatici, Oratores, 
Rhetores, Jurisperiti, etc. 

In considering the subject of mediaeval graduation, 
two antecedent customs furnish both a point of de- 
parture and an interpretation. These are, first, that 
certainly in the eleventh century, if not earlier, the 
chancellor of a cathedral, or, in his stead, the scho- 
lasticus, granted a licencia or faadtas docendu The 
one or the other was the titular head of the school.* 
The conditions we do not know. Secondly, the mem- 
bers of a guild corporation were divided into three dis- 
tinct classes — apprentices^ assistants or companions, and 
masters. These assistants were in France frequently 
called gar^ons or compagnons de devoir. As a general 
rule, the gargons were not admitted to the grade 
of " master " until they had performed some special 
task assigned to them, during the performance of 

* Sometimes tlie archdeacon. At what date I do not know, but 
certainly before 11 50, the chancellor or scholasticus was compelled to 
grant the licence to all competent persons. How the "competency" 
was determined does not appear. 



2i6 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES 

which they were kept apart from their fellows. It 
was only if this cJief cVoetivre was found satisfactory 
that they were installed as master — a ceremony which 
was generally followed by a banquet. The gargon 
who obtained his mastership obtained thereby for 
the first time freedom to exercise his trade or craft, 
and all the rights of a member of the guild. 

Let us consider now what the specific function of 
universities was, and we shall be at once struck by 
the analogy of their inner constitution with that of 
the guilds. 

In their beginnings the aim of the young commu- 
nities, at Salernum, Bologna, and Paris, was simply 
to instruct those who wished to practise medicine, 
law, or theology. There were no specific titles. At 
Salernum the student went forth to the world simply 
as a mcdicHS, as he did in the imperial times. When 
the organization became more settled a formal ex- 
amination had to be passed.* The teachers were 
called sometimes magistri, sometimes doctores, these 
terms being quite generically used, and not yet being 
confined to teachers who had graduated. Frederick 
in 1224 statutes "imprimis quod in civitate predicta 
(Naples) doctori^s et magistri erunt in qualibet facul- 
tate." Master and doctor are still in this statute used 
generically, and they were to be found, as a matter of 

* I am not aware that any candidates who had fulfilled the require- 
ments as to attendance and study and were recommended by their 
master were ever " plucked." 



GRADUATION. 217 

course, in every faculty as it arose. Even the licentiate 
of the faculty of theology was long known simply as 
** master," not "doctor," in England as well as on 
the continent of Europe. Just as the mastership in 
a guild conferred freedom to practise, so the form 
which the certificate of completed study took in 
Salernum was a liccncia medendi. But as these 
medici were then held to be " masters " in their art, 
they constantly carried with them into ordinary life 
the title of " magister," just as in these days a 
B.M. or CM. is popularly called a " doctor." In 
Bologna the teachers were called "doctores." In 
Paris, again, and in England they were called "magis- 
tri." As the various faculties differentiated them- 
selves, the term "magister" became ultimately con- 
fined to arts, and "doctor" was assigned to those who, 
having completed their art studies (usually at the age 
of twenty-one), had further qualified in the special 
studies of theology, law, or medicine. But to reach so 
advanced an organization as this required a century 
and a half The various universities, being familiar 
with each other's practices, gradually borrowed the 
one from the other. The University of Paris, how- 
ever, led the rest of Europe, and generally had its 
authority recognized without question, as the mother 
of universities.* 

When a formal recognition crowned the student's 
course, the guild practice ruled at Paris, as we have 
* Although in France itself Bologna had more influence than Paris. 



2i8 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

said it did at Naples and Salernum ; for the ceremony 
was simply the granting of a licencia docendi* in other 
words, conferring the freedom of a craft. It is true 
that in Paris the induction into the "mastership" 
was distinct from that of obtaining the licence, bi/t 
the licence conveyed the right to the mastership. 
There was no fresh trial for the title of " magister ; " 
it was merely a formal admission by the other masters 
into their body — the ceremonial of investing with cap 
and gown, followed by some festivity. Here, again, 
the guild installations seem to have largely influenced 
university practice.f 

Further, the trial for the licence or mastership, 
by public disputations against all comers in presence 
of the other masters of the university, was analogous 
to the chef d'ceiivre that the aspirant to the mastership 
of a craft had to submit to the judgment of the jurors 
of his craft. 

Our position is further illustrated by the minor title 
or degree which had arisen at Paris — Baccalaureus 
Artium. The "Arts" schools seem, in university 
towns, to have been gradually absorbed into the 
university organization, which, indeed, itself originally 
either grew out of them or in connection with them. 

* I am not aware that the Salernitan worls licencia medendi were 
used at Paris. 

t Albertus Magnus was thirty-five years of age before he was 
"doctored" by the University of Paris in 1228, but this was a special 
case, and probably simply an honorary admission to the body of theolo- 
gical teachers. 



GRADUATION. 219 

Boys from all parts attended the Magistri Artinm of 
the Parisian University merely for instruction in the 
old trivium — grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic ; and 
after three or four years' study, they received the title 
of Baccalaureus. In Bologna and Salernum the pre- 
paratory or "trivial" instruction was so much subor- 
dinated to the specialized function of these seats of 
learning that, for a time at least, no occasion arose 
for marking the completion of it by a degree. In 
Paris, on the other hand, the university rose more 
directly out of the school of " arts," and continued 
to comprise in its recognized academic work the in- 
struction of boys. Quite naturally, accordingly, there 
arose a necessity for marking the completion of the 
old trivial course. The word baccalaureus naturally 
presented itself. The original of the word seems 
to have been baccalarius, and this is said to be 
derived from the low Latin, bacca (for vacca), a 
cow. Accordingly, it originally meant a cowboy 
or herd, serving under a farmer. This history of 
the word curiously illustrates the analogy of the 
organization of universities with that of trade guilds. 
For in France, where the term was first applied, the 
youth who had finished his apprenticeship was called 
(as we have already stated) gargon, and might receive 
pay as an assistant to a master. So also the ap- 
prenticeship to the trivium being finished, the youth 
was formally presented to the faculty, and recog- 
nized as a gargon or Baccalarius Artium, i.e, as a 



220 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

young man serving under masters with a view to the 
mastership. When he reached this stage, which he 
generally did about the age of seventeen or eighteen, 
he then began to study for the mastership, and was 
often (if not indeed always in Paris and Bologna) 
employed as an assistant to the master in preparing 
other bachelors or (as we may call them) arts* ap- 
prentices. The bachelorship had, it seems to me, a 
prospective rather than a retrospective significance ; 
that is to say, it did not so much mark a course 
finished as " inception in arts " with a view to a 
mastership. The bachelor, in short, was only now 
entitled to say that he was a " youth in arts." 

It was only later that the word, through a 
mistaken etymology, became baccalauretis^ and was 
supposed to have connection with the laurel-berry, 
and graduation was called laureation. In chivalry 
the word "bachelor" was also used, but not in the 
same sense.* 

The word " bachalarius " was adopted by Bologna 
only in the course of the thirteenth century. In 1297 

* "An honorary distinction was made," says Hallam (cap. ix. 
partii.), "between knights-bannerets and bachelors. The former were 
the richest and best accompanied. No man c juld be a banneret unless 
he possessed a certain estate, and could bring a certain number of 
lances into the field." But a knight-bachelor might hold higher 
military command under the Crown than a knight-banneret. It is 
unnecessary to point out that " bachelor " is used in our own early 
literature to denote a young man simply, without reference to his being 
married. It was generally used in the Middle Ages, i.e. baccalarius 
and baccalaria, to denote young persons above eighteen years of age 
serving under a master. The French feminine was bachddte. 



GRADUATION, 221 

we find it ; but it was then applied to a stage of 
progress in the specialized studies of law, etc. If the 
student, after a certain length of attendance and 
payment of a certain sum, had conducted " Repeti- 
tions " * for one year, he was then called Bachalarius 
(Savigny). Each faculty as it became organized 
adopted the term " bachelor " to mark the half-way 
house to a full degree. 

The words " doctor " (teacher) and " magister " 
(master) — equivalent terms — were first M?>(t<\ generically, 
I have said, by those who taught and examined others, 
but when the universities began to organize a gradua- 
tion system they were largely, I cannot but think, 
under the influence of the practice of mediaeval guilds. 
They were guilds of learning. We must at once see, 
indeed, that in eveiy nation where letters flourished 
the names "master" and "doctor" would, as a matter 
of course, be found ; these words being used, as we 
have said, only in a generic sense. But when we speak 
of academic "degrees," we use the words in a specific 
sense and mean dignities and titles, formally con- 
ferred in accordance with certain regulations, which 
dignities carried with them certain rights to teach 
and practise a science or art. It would seem that 
titles of honour in this sense were conferred among 
the ancient Jews. But though it may be true that in 
the Jewish schools, before Christ, the titles of doctor 

* See sequel for explanation of this and for the conditions of 
graduation, under *' University Studies," 



222 MED2MVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

and master (Rabbi) were not simply assumed but 
formally conferred, it would be absurd to trace the 
introduction of these titles in the Middle Ages to a 
conscious imitation of a then hated and despised 
race. If these designations were in use in the Arab 
schools, it might be reasonable perhaps to find in the 
Arab custom a partial explanation of the European 
usage ; but I am not aware that they were so used. 
In China, again, three titles are conferred after public 
examination, corresponding to bachelor, licentiate (or 
master), and doctor. But this simply means that the 
Chinese terms are best represented (not translated) 
by these European words. The literal translation is 
of a very " flowery " character. 

The next question of interest In connection with 
degrees is that of the time of their institution. Up 
to the middle of the twelfth century, any one taught 
in the infant universitates who thought he had the 
requisite knowledge. It was made a matter of 
reproach against Abelard, who died 1142, that he 
had no formal authority to teach ; and we know 
from the poem of ^gidius (quoted by Meiners, ii. 
p. 208), that young men, wholly unfit, ventured to 
teach medicine at Salerno. Even in the second half 
of the twelfth century, when the bishops and abbots, 
who acted, personally or through their deputies, as 
chancellors of the rising university schools, wished 
to assume to themselves exclusively the right of grant- 



GRADUATION, 223 

ing the licence (with a view to check abuses, I pre- 
sume), Pope Alexander III. forbade them, on the 
ground that the teaching faculty was a gift of God. 
This itself is evidence, no doubt, that the custom of 
granting licences or degrees only after examination 
had begun ; but it also shows that it had not estab- 
lished itself. We may fix the establishment of the 
custom at the end of the twelfth or beginning of the 
thirteenth century ; but in theology it must have been 
much earlier. 

In 1207, the increasing number of students of 
theology had led so many masters to assume the 
teaching of that subject, that Pope Innocent III, 
wrote to the Bishop of Paris, as Chancellor of the 
University, to restrict the number of theologica] 
teachers to eight From this we may date the 
beginning of the degree in theology, in any formal or 
technical sense, that is to say, the " licence " to teach 
theology, but not, therefore, a " doctorship " in name. 
From this, too, we may conclude, as I have before 
said, that the pope never ceased to exercise, without 
hindrance, a certain control over the theological school 
much more direct than he ever pretended to have 
over the schools of arts, in which, shortly before, a 
" licence " had been instituted at the instance of the 
university itself 

The distinction between " masters " and " doctors " 
v/as not even yet, however, made, as we may see from a 
letter of Pope Innocent in 12 10, where he refers to the 
17 



224 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

whole body of teachers of theology, arts, and canon 
law, as doctor es liberalium artium. Even in Salernum 
the distinction between "licentiates" and "doctors" 
was not recognized. This college first granted a 
formal licence under the statute of Roger, in 1 1 30, 
but it was a practical or professional licencia medendi 
merely. In 123 1, degrees in medicine were conferred 
in Paris before the formal existence of a separate 
medical " faculty." 

"Master" and "doctor" still continued to be 
interchangeable titles. The history of universities 
shows much fluctuation both as to periods of study 
for degrees and the designations given. In Germany, 
for example, the " mastership " never took hold ; but, 
instead of it, as to this day, the " doctorship." 

As soon as " faculties " established themselves, the 
degrees of bachelor and licentiate (master) were im- 
ported into them. Each faculty had a recognized 
graduation scheme in the latter decades of the 
thirteenth century ; that is to say, there was a 
bachelorship of medicine and theology and law, as 
well as a licentiateship, or mastership, or doctorship 
in these subjects. 

Source of Gradtiation. — According to Meiners 
(ii. p. 213), the attainment of a licentiateship by a 
bachelor originally depended entirely on the masters 
who taught him.* It was an university act, but not 

* I am disposed to think, on the contrary, that the chancellor always 
conferred the licencia. 



GRADUATION-. 225 

a corporate act. The next step was that the master, 
or masters, presented the candidate to the chancellor, 
who conferred the licence which carried with it, 
as I have already explained, the mastership. When 
faculties were finally formed, it was the faculty that 
presented the candidate.* Meiners notwithstanding, 
I am of opinion the " licencia " was never conferred in 
Paris except by the Chancellor. During the disper- 
sion of the Paris masters, however, in 1229, they them- 
selves, without the authority of chancellor or bishop, 
examined and promoted to licence or mastership. 

The well-known Bull of Gregory IX. (123 i) refers 
to bachelors as receiving their titles from the masters 
alone — the chancellor being called in only in the 
case of licentiates or masters. It also confirms 
what we have previously stated, that licentiates or 
masters were practically one and the same, of which 
indeed there can be no doubt. The assumption of 
the title of " master " by the licentiate was, I repeat, 
a merely ceremonial introduction into the magistral 
body, the new master being then invested with the 
biretta. There followed fees and festivity, and this 
was all as in the trade-guilds. 

* At this day, in Scotland, each faculty presents its candidates to the 
Senatus, {i.e. the united faculties), by laying the names of those who have 
passed their trials before that body, and then, through its dean, presents 
them to the chancellor at a public ceremony. We learn, from a statute 
of the Paris Faculty of Arts (1279), that they admitted to " proofs " for 
the licence men trained at other seats of learning — an interesting and 
significant fact. 



226 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

In Oxford and Cambridge the degree system was 
much the same as at Paris. At one time Oxford 
gave degrees for single subjects, such as grammar, 
rhetoric, poetics, and music ; but the " masters " in 
these single arts took rank only with Bachelors of 
Arts in the full sense, and were consequently not full 
" masters " of the university. Cambridge at one time 
gave a degree in grammar alone : * The last degree 
in grammar was conferred in 1542. The old term 
of attendance for the bachelorship, namely, four years 
(now three), and seven years, in all, for the mastership, 
was long retained at Oxford and Cambridge. The 
latter degree, however, has not for centuries (?) been 
the mark of any attainment above the bachelorship. 
Degrees in theology, medicine, and law, granted after 
academic training and examination, fell into disuse, 
as did the whole professorial and specialized system. 
" Professional " studies also became virtually extinct, 
and are only now in these days being revived. 

If we turn to Bologna, we shall find that the title 
of " magister " and " dominus " was applied to Irnerius, 
but not doctor. The first teachers, however, early 
began to co-opt others who had shown their fitness 
to instruct, and these were known as " doctors " or 
teachers, not officially " masters," as in Paris, though 
this term was also often used. This co-optation seems 
to have been the earliest form of faculty-promotion. 

* This was specially intended for schooolmasters. 



GRADUATION. 227 

111 the course of the thirteenth century there are to 
be found doctores medicincB^ philosophice, etc. By that 
time examinations had been introduced. The jurists 
held that the title "doctor" should be specially re- 
served for their subject. While the degrees were as 
yet confined to law, Pope Honorius III. interfered 
with the granting of degrees in 12 19, and in order to 
impose a -check on abuses, directed that they should 
be conferred (not by, but) by permission of,* the arch- 
deacon of the cathedral and under his presidency. 
The mere right to teach — the " Hcencia " — did not of 
itself confer the doctorship ; but this latter title was 
given after the licencia, and involved a further and 
public, but evidently quite formal, examination in the 
presence of the archdeacon as Chancellor. 

Though arts were taught in Bologna, there seemed 
to be no promotion in arts till long after the custom 
was established in Paris ; and it would appear that 
the title of bachelor was never known in Italy as an 
arts title or degree. 

With these remarks on what we conceive to have 
been the origin and growth of university degrees, we 
would now sum up as follows : — 

The gradiis, steps, or degrees in the ladder of 
knowledge, as soon as the organization was fairly 
complete, were nominally four, actually three — viz, 
bachelor, licentiate or master, and finally doctor, but 

• I so interpret the Bull. 



228 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

this last outside " arts." I am, of course, giving the 
general usage or rather generalizing the usage ; for 
each university had its own peculiarities. At first, 
each man who had it in him, or thought he had, 
began to lecture and took his chance.* As a lecturer, 
he was called magister or doctor in the generic sense 
of these words — that is, simply a master or teacher. 
As the universities gradually hardened down into 
definite self-governing organizations, the chancellor, 
on the presentation of the " masters " or " doctors," 
as the case might be, formally granted a licence to 
competent students after examination. Just as the 
universities had in their origin practical and profes- 
sional specialized aims, so the licence they at first 
granted was practical and professional — licencia 
medendi and licencia docendi. 

In Paris, owing to the dominating influence of 
arts studies, the old title connected with arts survived 
— viz. magister, and the conferring of this followed on 
the licence as a mere ceremonial. In Salernum, the title 
was sometimes " master," sometimes " doctor ; " in 
Bologna, and Italy generally, it was " doctor." When 
theology became separated from arts, as a separate 
study or faculty, the title doctor was also assigned to 
this new faculty as a " higher " faculty, it being already 
found to exist in Italy, if not also in France, for civil 
and canon law. Again, a preparatory course of in- 

* I refer to Bologna and Salernum. In theolog}' at Paris, the 
Chancellor of Notre Dame always conferred the title. 



GRADUATION, \ 229 

struction for boys having always existed in the monas- 
tery and cathedral schools, a title was invented to 
mark the completion of this course wherever the 
universities included the work of secondary or ''trivial" 
schools. This title was Baccalarius. 

Itter informs us, in his learned and clumsy work 
" De Gradibus sive Honoribus Academicis," that the 
licentiateship was, subsequently in some universities, 
higher than the mastership, so that a complete 
university course was then represented by four de- 
grees — bachelor, master, licentiate, and finally doctor, 
which last was usually taken at the age of thirty or 
thirty-five ; but, in general, there were only three 
degrees, the mastership being included in the licen- 
tiateship, and, in some cases, the mastership including 
the doctorship. 

Each specialist university, as we saw in a previous 
lecture, early set itself to add on the specialist studies 
of other universities. Bologna added to the arts course 
and to civil law, colleges or faculties of theology and 
medicine. And when, in 1224, Frederick II. instituted, 
the University of Naples, he included all "lawful" 
studies or faculties, though the term " faculty " was 
not then in use in its later and present technical sense. 

The next development of the degree system 
was the introduction of the grades of bachelor and 
master or licentiate into each of the higher faculties 
— theology, law, and medicine. Thus a man who 
had finished his preliminary arts studies, generally at 



230 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

the age of twenty-one, and wished to specialize in 
theology or medicine or law, had to pass through the 
stages of bachelor of theology, or of medicine, or of 
law, and then of master or licentiate, before he attained 
the title of doctor. The bachelorship of medicine or 
law was reached in three years, of theology in seven. 
Four years' further study brought the doctor's degree. 
Thus a man might be doctor of medicine or law at 
the age of twenty-seven, and of theology at thirty-one. 
A doctor in both civil and canon law was called 
J.U.D. (Juris Utriusque Doctor) ; afterwards LL.D. 
was substituted. D.CL. may (I presume) mean 
either civil or canon law according to its historical 
relations. 

This was the complete graduation system ; but it 
did not obtain in every university in its completeness. 

That the bachelorship was taken very young, we 
know from the history of many universities. In the 
seventeenth century a statute was passed at Oxford 
fixing fourteen as the youngest age for matriculation, 
and, centuries before this, twelve years of age had been 
fixed as the minimum at Paris. As early as 1380* 
the statutes of King's Hall, Cambridge, require that 
the matriculant shall be at least fourteen, and that he 
shall be sufficiently proficient in grammar to take up 
logic or any other " faculty which the warden might 
select for him " (Willis). 

• I had written 1326, but altered to 1380 on the authority of the 
recent beautiful edition of Willis's '■' Architectural Cambridge" (1886). 



GRADUATION. 231 

The bachelor course was, in fact, a grammar 
school or trivium course. And in our own time, we 
see that the German universities have relegated it 
entirely to the gymnasiums or high schools, reserving 
the universities for specialized study. The gymna- 
sium course is, however, a far wider and more pro- 
longed course than the baccalaurean course of the 
mediaeval universities. The question now await- 
ing solution in Scotland (and in England, too, for 
that matter) is whether the properly secondary-school 
instruction shall be relegated entirely to schools, as 
in Germany and France, or continue to hold a place 
in the Faculty of Arts. In England, elementary and 
advanced school work choked off specialized university 
teaching till recently. The solution will probably be a 
compromise. Boys of seventeen ought to come to 
the universities with a preliminary training sufficient to 
enable them to enter upon an academic treatment of 
Arts subjects. Certainly neither Church nor School 
can afford to drive out Arts studies, pursued as a 
branch of liberal education, from the universities. 
It would be (it seems to me) a retrograde movement. 
At the same time the masters degree must be so 
specialized as to secure high attainments in those 
special departments of study which a man intends 
to make his life-profession. The Baccalaureate should 
be restored in Scotland 

On the subject of degrees an interesting discussion 



232 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

arose in Paris in the thirteenth century — viz., whether 
the licence and mastership could be rightly conferred 
on those who did not mean to teach. It was settled 
in the affirmative, and hence arose the distinction 
between Magistri regentes (governing) or legentes 
(lecturing) and Magistri non-regentes. The Magister- 
regens was ultimately known by the name of regent 
simply, and carried his pupils through the whole 
curriculum for bachelor, and in many universities also 
for master, until the development of literature, 
philosophy, and science made it desirable to appoint 
special "■ masters " for each department, and these 
were then called professors. But long before this 
title was recognized in Scotland it existed elsewhere. 
In fact, it is used as applied to theology in Frederick's 
statutes of 1224. With the rise of professors arose 
also departmental studies in arts, and scientific investi- 
gation ; indeed, until the departmental and specialized 
professoriate was instituted, the universities were little 
more than gymnasia for the training of aspirants 
to the professions ; but in Paris the aim was always 
higher than this, owing to the philosophic character 
of the " arts " studies. The British universities have 
for the last hundred and fifty years gradually been 
recognizing their double function as at once teach- 
ing schools and academic institutes for the ad- 
vancement of learning. A professor who does 
not fulfil both functions is not a professor in the 
strict sense of the word at all, but merely a kind of 



GRADUATION. 233 

M agister regens or legens. In a sense, he is a fraud. 
He is a great obstacle also in the way of scientific 
progress ; for, if he does not investigate himself, he 
will look coldly on young aspirants in the field of 
investigation. 

In Oxford and Cambridge, till quite recently, the 
function to which these universities mainly restricted 
themselves, that of schools of arts, has been inter- 
preted in the narrowest sense. By "arts" the mediaeval 
universities meant all departments of knowledge not 
specifically professional — that is to say, language, 
rhetoric, logic, psychology, metaphysics, politics, 
physics, natural history, geometry, music, astronomy, 
and so forth. This scheme of knowledge translated 
into modern language becomes the whole range of 
learning, science, and art, in so far as pursued in a 
scientific spirit^ a7td with a view to the advancemeyit 
of knowledge merely. 

An university, properly understood, is the home of 
the arts and sciences. It exists to teach them, and it 
equally exists to promote them. In the English 
universities, the culture and discipline of the general 
student has been the almost exclusive aim. To 
speak of "culture" as the aim of college and uni- 
versity Hfe is to throw a mere phrase at the head of 
the public. Culture can never be a conscious end to 
a man without unmanning him. Still more must it 
emasculate an university where it is achieved, after all, 
by not more than one in five hundred. And when 



234 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

we do find it in its supremest and most precious form, 
we cannot say we like it. It is always narrow, and 
must, from the psychological nature of the case, be 
egotistical. That, indeed, is a poor result of the 
highest education — a man who thinks himself supreme 
or precious, and who spends his life in turning pretty 
phrases when not engaged in admiration of his 
own exclusive intellectual possessions. Such a man 
admires even his own college only in so far as it con- 
tains himself Style and form are excellent things, 
but they never yet existed in perfection, except when 
there was an ardent soul, a fiery enthusiasm, a great 
human purpose, behind them. Mr. Edward Kirk- 
patrick, in his book on the universities, well says, 
"An institution which stakes its whole power and 
credit in society upon refinement and intelligence not 
evinced in any one particular form of efiiciency will 
inevitably disappear more and more from connection 
with a world of flesh and blood into a kindred cloud- 
land of unrealities and abstractions." Indeed, may 
we not truly say that it is our relation to the concrete 
life of humanity that gives, not merely substance and 
stability, but also stimulus and inspiration to all 
thought of much value ? It is this that breathes into 
abstract pursuits a living soul and animates the 
worker to renewed efforts. 

The culture of the few, and the giving of the many 
a certain amount of discipline, bj^ means of the ancient 
tongues, mathematics, and a little logic, to fit them for 



GRADUATION, 235 

the professions of clergyman and schoolmaster, is not 
the only return society expects from great univer- 
sities. The large rewards of study, especially fellow- 
ships, should be directed to the encouragement of 
pursuits which do not " pay," and no longer reserved 
mainly for men who can find in clerical or scholastic 
situations the proper prizes for excellence in Latin, 
Greek, and mathematics. The money should be 
devoted to the equipment of the arts (including of 
course ancient literatures) and sciences, and the sus- 
tenance of those who pursue them from the pure love 
of knowledge and in the interests of mankind. " Pro- 
fessions " can take care of themselves.* 

• I cannot but think that the present outlay on physical science at 
Oxford and Cambridge is to be justified only if it restricts itself within 
the purely scientific and avoids the strictly professional. The numerous 
modifications of the B. A. course with a view to admit of men taking up 
a line of liberal study which may prepare them for *' professional " study 
are, in principle, to be commended ; but fhc circum;itances of the country 
do not call upon Oxford and Cambridge for p f-^esh supply of medical 
and legal practitioners. Their proper function is much higher. 



236 MEDIALVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 



LECTURE XIII. 

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. 

I HAVE some difficulty in deciding whether I should 
now treat of "university studies" as the natural com- 
plement of the preceding lecture on graduation, or ask 
your attention to the early constitution of those 
other universities which laid the foundations of the 
European system. On the whole, I think it better 
to take the latter course. 

In a former lecture I referred to the educational 
activity of England before the time of Charlemagne. 
Bede, one of the most illustrious of those who main- 
tained the reputation of his country, died in A.D. 735, 
and we may say with William of Malmesbury that 
almost all knowledge of events was buried with Bede 
for four centuries. 

Before the time of Alfred there were schools in 
connection with the Priory of St. Frideswyde in 
Oxford, and also with the conventual establishment 
at Ely from very early times. It was doubtless 
out of, or in close affiliation with, these two insti- 



OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. 237 

tutions that the Universities of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge first arose. 

The discrediting of certain passages (recognized 
to be interpolations) in Asser's "Vita Alfredi," and 
of the chronicle of Ingulphus, compels us to say that 
there is no evidence that Oxford was more than an 
arts school of the type of the Benedictine down to 
the beginning of the twelfth century. From the 
point of view from which I regard the rise of univer- 
sities, I should say that Oxford only then first showed 
a disposition to pass from a secondary school to an 
university when Vacarius, about 1 149, lectured there 
on civil law. Had this specialty been fostered at 
Oxford, it would have become an university of law 
with a strong '* arts " basis ; especially as at this very 
time there was great dialectical activity among the 
Oxonians. But King Stephen and the Church ob- 
jected to civil law, and nothing came of Vacarius' 
venture. 

Anstey, in the introduction to "Monumenta Aca- 
demica," i. xxxiv., considers that there is no evidence 
that Oxford was an university before the Conquest. 
This at least is, I should say, quite certain. It would 
be pedantic, however, to say that no educational in- 
stitution was an university till it had the constitution 
of an university as that was shaped by the *' nations '' 
at Bologna and Paris, or by an universitas magis- 
trorum ; but it is certainly correct to say that no 
school, however efficient, is an university until it does 



238 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

the work of an university, that is to say, provides for 
the teaching of men as well as of boys, and this by 
specialist regents or professors. About twenty years 
before Vacarius lectured, Robert Pulleyne returned 
from Paris, and endeavoured to revive the teaching 
of theology, and succeeded in infusing a higher spirit 
into the Oxford school. Here was another oppor- 
tunity afforded to Oxford of developing into an 
universitas. 

Our past lectures on the birth of universities 
sufficiently show that it is exceedingly difficult to put 
our finger on the precise date at which a good " arts " 
school became an university, or studium generale. I 
should certainly not postpone the date of the evolu- 
tion, from the lower to the higher, till the period of 
the formal adoption of more or less of the Paris con- 
stitution. A studium generale may exist in substance 
though not in external form ; but I am- not aware that 
this designation was ever authoritatively given to any 
school which had not a specialized as well as a "public" 
course of instruction. The first royal recognition was 
by Henry HI., who summoned Parliament to meet at 
Oxford in 1258. But we must date the starting- 
point of the universitas long before- this. University 
College was instituted in 1232. We know that the 
Benedictine Order was in a corrupt state in the time 
of Robert Grosseteste, who died in 1253 ; and that 
this eminent man had much to do with the de- 
nunciation of abuses, the encouragement of the 



OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. 239 

(then) new Dominicans and Franciscans, who gave 
so great an impulse to learning in Europe, and the 
advocacy of a higher learning generally. He was a 
patriot and a scholar and a humanist. His authority 
alone would carry the university back to A.D. 1200. 

In speaking of Paris, I have already told you of 
the students' riot of 1228, which resulted in the 
maltreatment of many of the citizens, and how 
Queen Blanche, acting under bad advice, caused 
the students to be attacked while engaged with 
their sports outside the walls. Driven into the city 
and unarmed, many students, while seeking safety 
in places of concealment, were killed, and a still 
larger number seriously wounded. The university, 
resenting this treatment, broke up and migrated to 
Orleans, Angers, Rheims, and other towns, where 
teaching was conducted and degrees conferred in- 
dependently of Church or King. Henry HI. of 
England seized the opportunity -to invite the dis- 
persed scholars to the rising schools of Oxford and 
Cambridge. These students came, and brought with 
them the university idea of studies and privileges ; and 
we are certainly safe in maintaining that, concurring 
as this date does with the foundation of University 
College and the activity of Robert Grosseteste, the 
date of the university could not possibly be put later 
than 1200 ; and this applies to both Oxford and Cam- 
bridge. For we may fairly conclude that the immi- 
grants, after the migration from Paris in 1229, would 
18 



240 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

not have directed their steps to Oxford and Cam- 
bridge at all had they not known that it was possible 
there to continue studies above those which belonged 
to a good Arts cathedral school. The influence 
of the Paris migration must have been very great, 
for, as Mr. Mullinger says, " the University of Paris 
throughout the thirteenth century well-nigh monopo- 
lized the interest of the learned in Europe. Thither 
thought and speculation seemed irresistibly attracted. 
It was there the new orders fought the decisive battle 
for place and power ; that new forms of scepticism 
rose in rapid succession, and heresies of varying 
moment riveted the watchful eye of Rome ; that 
anarchy most often triumphed and flagrant vices 
most prevailed ; and it was from this seething centre 
that those influences went forth which predominated 
in the cotemporary history of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge" (i. 132). The migrating masters would carry 
the genius of Paris with them. 

But while it is highly probable that the date 1200 
may be assigned to Cambridge, there can be no 
doubt that at Oxford there was an university, in fact 
if not in form, sixty years before this. Had there not 
been a well-known and active higher school there in 
the earlier decades of the twelfth century, Robert 
Pulley ne would not have come from Paris about 1 1 30 
to lecture there, nor would Vacarius have endeavoured 
to found a school of civil law in 1 149, nor should we 
hear (on the authority of John of Salisbury) that dis- 



OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. 

cussions regarding universals {in re or ante rem) raged 
at Oxford in 1153. Again, to prove that Oxford was 
largely frequented in 1200, it is sufficient to say- 
that in 1209 there was a secession from Oxford: 
" Recesserunt ab Oxonia tria millia clericorum tarn 
magistri quam discipuli ita quod nee unus ex omni 
universitate remansit." * Of these some went to 
Reading, some to Cambridge. Then, Giraldus Cam- 
brensis read his " Topographia Cambriae " to the 
inhabitants of Oxford, and the second day's reading 
(he tells us) was addressed to the " doctores diversa- 
rum facultatum (studies) omnes et discipulos famae 
majoris et noticiae." This was in 1 186. Accord- 
ingly, we may conclude that Oxford was entitled to 
the name " universitas " about 1140. That there 
was a decline is clear enough from the writings of 
Grosseteste and the complaints of Roger Bacon and 
Merton. And, further, that it was to the settlements 
of Franciscans and Dominicans (i 220-1 230) that the 
revival was chiefl}^ due is also, I think, clear. 

The date of papal bulls is always an important 
one in the history of universities ; but, as I have 
again and again said, all the earliest universities (with 
the exception of Palentia and Naples) grew and were 
not founded, and it would consequently be incorrect 
to date the existence of an university from a papal or 
royal charter such as that of Henry III. to Oxford. 

• Roger of Wendover's " Flowers of History," by Giles, ii. 249 ; 
quoted by Denifle, p. 242. 



342 MFrE'D'lALVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

To sum up, I conclude that the true university life of 
Oxford began about 1140, of Cambridge about 1200, 
and that their university organization took its form 
about 1230, after the Paris migration. 

Cambridge first received a papal bull in 13 18 from 
Pope John XXIL, but in 1231 it began to be recog- 
nized by royal letters. 

So active was the life of Cambridge, that (owing 
to local riots) it could afford a migration to North- 
ampton in 1 26 1. Subsequently there was a migration 
from Oxford to Stamford. 

As at the seats of learning abroad, so at Oxford 
and Cambridge there were no university buildings 
or schools. These did not begin to exist till the 
fourteenth century. The students were taught in 
the hostels, or in private rooms ; and the churches 
were used for large assemblies. Somewhat later, 
houses were specially hired by masters for the 
purposes of instruction, and these were called 
" schools." There were thirty-two such schools in 
Oxford at the beginning of the fifteenth century. 
Besides these, there were the schools in the religious 
houses, and extra-academic grammar-schools for those 
not yet fit to enter on university work, it being im- 
possible at that time to obtain in the greater part 
of England the necessary preparatory instruction in 
grammar. 

While it is beyond all question that both the 
universities and colleges of Oxford and Cambridge 



OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. 



243 



modelled themselves largely on Paris, there are yet 
peculiarities deserving of notice as throwing additional 
light on the earliest conception of an university. In 
Cambridge, for example, the functionary on whom 
we have to concentrate our attention is not a Rector, 
but a Chancellor, who, though elected by the two 
houses of regents and non-regents, derived only a part 
of his authority from the bodies that elected him. 
Dean Peacock emphasizes this peculiarity. The 
chancellor, he says, had powers independent of the 
regents, and his authority was necessary to give 
validity to their acts. He was not necessarily a 
regent himself, but constituted a " distinct estate in 
the academical commonwealth." " His powers, though 
confirmed and amplified by royal charters, were 
ecclesiastical both in their nature and origfin. The 
court over which he presided was governed by the 
principles of the canon as well as of the civil law ; 
and the power of excommunication and absolution, 
derived in the first instance from the Bishop of Ely' 
[who claimed a visitatorial power resisted by the 
university] and subsequently from the pope, became 
the most prompt and formidable instrument for 
extending his authority. The form likewise of con- 
ferring degrees, and the kneeling posture of the 
person admitted, are indicative both of the act and 
the authority of an ecclesiastical superior." It is 
clear, accordingly, that the chancellor in England 
possessed many of the powers of the Parisian and 



244 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

Bononian rectors. The internal regulation of the 
education and of the degree system rested practically, 
however, with the regents, the non-regents exercising 
a concurrent jurisdiction in matters of property and 
privileges only. There were only two procurators 
or proctors (called also rectors), and their authority 
was next to that of the chancellor and his vice. 
They were chosen annually by the regents ; * and 
among their other academic duties they regulated the 
markets and hostelries, and supervised the revenues. 

The immediately preceding remarks refer specially 
to Cambridge, but they are substantially applicable 
to Oxford also. Indeed it would appear, from Mr. 
Anstey's " Monumenta Academica," that the power of 
the chancellor was even greater at the latter seat of 
learning than at Cambridge ; and in this respect the 
English universities, while adopting, after 1230, the 
general characteristics of the Parisian system, yet 
deviated from it in what seems to me an essential 
particular. 

I am speaking of the early external constitution, 
not of the inner life, of the English universities. 
This latter question is a large and complex one, and 
bound up with the history of England ; but although 
I shall not venture to touch it myself, I cannot re- 
frain from quoting here an interesting passage from 
DoUinger's " Universitaten jetzt und sonst" : — 

"England, pursuing throughout its whole history 

* Not by the students. 



OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. 245 

the twofold aim of practical activity and political 
freedom, and hostile to all centralization, has confined 
itself to two universities, two learned corporations 
which have preserved down to this day their republican 
constitution and autonomy.* A single university 
would have become too exclusive, too much of a 
monopoly, and ultimately would have gone to sleep on 
the pillow of its privileges and traditionary honours. 
But the two watched and stimulated each other, and 
each of them specially cherished one of the two main 
tendencies of the English mind, — Oxford the ecclesi- 
astical, and the disciplines subserving this ; Cambridge 
the mathematical and more practical aims." 

Hostels, Halls, and Colleges. 

One cannot refer to English universities without 
having one's attention fixed by the collegiate system 
which so soon dwarfed the university. 

Like all the other parts of university organization, 
halls and colleges arose quite naturally to meet the 
wants of the hour. The multitude of students 
congregating at the university seats made it often very 
difficult for them to find lodgings, and their extreme 
youth exposed them to many temptations and evils. 
Accordingly, there arose at Paris, as we saw (and at 
Paris especially, because at Bologna and Salernum 
those recognized as university students were for some 
time much older than the undergraduates of Paris), 

• To these have now been added Durham, Victoria, and London. 



246 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

" hostels " (Jwspitia, a name taken from the monastery 
hotels), or " houses," set apart for the various nations, 
where lodging and some sort of protection and super- 
intendence might be obtained at a moderate cost. 
Even at Bologna the poor students who were main- 
tained at the cost of some charitable foundation, 
formed a kind of college and lived together under rule. 
The date of the first college there was 1263,* but long 
prior to this charitable funds were dispensed to 
students. Collegiate institutions, however, never 
flourished in Italy. 

So early as the beginning of the thirteenth 
century (and doubtless before this) hostels existed 
at Paris ; but the name " college " seems first to 
have been specially applied to the houses of religious 
orders, where were accommodated those youths who 
meant to devote themselves wholly to a " religious " 
life. So far at least as " secular " students were 
concerned, the "colleges" at Paris were charity 
houses, dependent largely, if not wholly, on the 
goodwill of the well-disposed. Even in the twelfth 
century there were colleges (such as the Danish), 
which seem, however, to have soon disappeared.f 
They were all in the first instance merely boarding- 
houses, not schools. One of the earliest, if not the 



* Collegium Avenioniense (see Savigny, xxi. 72). 

t Mr. Kirkpatrick (p. 252) quotes from Bulaeus, part iii. p. 392, in 
evidence that a college for one hundred poor clerks was founded in 
the eleventh century (?). 



OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE, 2An 

earliest, of the colleges which held its ground, was the 
"College des Bons Enfans," founded in 1209. The 
poverty and dependence of this institution is pre- 
served in the old rhyme — 

" Les bons enfans orrez criei ; 
Du pain ! n'es veuil oublier." 

But though the students of this first college do 
not seem to have belonged to any religious order, their 
aim was ecclesiastical work of some kind. Even the 
first purely secular college, and the most famous of 
them all in history, was founded for the study of 
theology — that, namely, instituted by Robert de Sor- 
bonne, chaplain to Louis IX., who also contributed to 
its foundation. It was intended only for those who 
had already graduated in arts and meant to devote 
themselves to theology. It was thus a college com- 
posed solely of " Fellows, " as we should say in 
England. It was founded in 1250. 

The college of Navarre was founded in 1304, by 
Jeanne of Navarre, for the board and lodging of 
seventy poor scholars at all the stages of the university 
curriculum — twenty grammarians, i.e. boys preparing 
for their B.A. ; thirty arts students, i.e. preparing for 
masterships ; and twenty theological students. So 
with the college of Montagu. In the thirteenth cen- 
tury sixteen colleges were founded in Paris. In the 
course of time some seventy or eighty arose, many of 
which, however, ceased to exist after a brief and in- 
glorious career. The Scots college was not founded 



248 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNVERSHIES. 

till 1326 by David, Bishop of Moray. About that 
date, the houses and colleges contained the great pro- 
portion of the members of the university, but there was 
no enforcement of residence. Eighteen were colleges 
of religious orders. At the date of the Revolution 
only ten survived. The old rule, that every student 
must be enrolled with some "master," always held 
good, and was necessary in the interests of discipline. 

It is not to be supposed that the original hostels 
accommodated more than a small proportion of the 
students — at least until the fourteenth century. The 
others sought lodgings where they could get them ; 
and the University of Paris, after 121 5, had the right 
to inquire into, and approve of, the rents charged, so 
as to protect the students against extortion — a right 
confirmed by the Bull of 1231, and exercised, as I have 
previously said, by the municipality of Bologna, and 
also at Cambridge.* 

I think it is sufficiently apparent from my previous 
lectures that the universities arose out of or in con- 
nection with the existing Schools of Arts, and were 
at first simply an expansion and evolution of the 
existing ecclesiastical organizations. This view is 
further incidentally confirmed by the fact that it was 
not only the regents resident in the colleges who 
were required to be celibate, but all masters of all 
faculties in Paris. This rule naturally arose out of 
the close affinities of the academic with the monastic 

* Doubtless also at Oxford. 



OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. 249 

and canonical life. It was not till 1452 that in Paris 
the masters of even the medical faculty were allowed 
to marry. That magistri-regentes residing within 
college walls should be bound to celibacy is intelligible. 

In England the hostels were regulated lodging- 
houses, where the students resided at their own cost, 
under the supervision of a principal admitted by the 
chancellor. The students would club together and 
hire a house or houses, and call it a hospitium. The 
members of a hospitium were either from the same 
part of the country, or pursuing the same studies. 
There existed in Cambridge, Hospitia Artistarum and 
Hospitia Juristarum. It was only by slow degrees 
that these disappeared, giving way as colleges multi- 
plied during the latter half of the thirteenth and the 
whole of the fourteenth centuries. These hostels 
were sometimes called " inns," " entries," or " halls ; " 
also litteraruni diversoria. The principal (always 
either a bachelor or, more generally, a master) 
and his hall were substantially independent of the 
university authorities, but were, of course, subject to 
certain general regulations. 

The monastic institutions at Paris, and of the Fran- 
ciscans and Dominicans at the English universities, 
were practically colleges, as this word was afterwards 
understood, because there was in them a common life 
under rule. The term " college " was primarily applied 
to a corporation of individuals having -a common 
purpose, and not to buildings. The latter went by 



250 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

the name of Domus, or Aula Scholarmm. The term 
"college" was next used as equivalent to endowed 
hall ; and while the residents at halls or hostels paid 
for their own lodging and maintenance, with such 
help as they could obtain from loans out of the uni- 
versity chests in return for the articles they pawned, 
or from the proceeds of begging, the occupants of 
colleges had free quarters ; but they had to accept with 
this privilege the detailed regulations of the college 
statutes. Eighty seems to have been the largest 
number of halls ever existing in Oxford. Owing 
to the increase in the number of colleges, the halls 
numbered only twenty-six in 151 1, and as colleges 
increased in number and wealth they bought up the 
hostels at both the university seats. "As stars lose 
their light," says Fuller, " when the sun riseth, so all 
these hostels decayed when endowed colleges began 
to appear in Cambridge." 

" It is customary, with the ignorant," says Dean 
Hook, " to speak of our colleges as monastic institu- 
tions ; but, as every one knows who is acquainted 
with the history of the country, the colleges, with 
very few exceptions, were introduced to supplant the 
monasteries. Early in the twelfth century the opinion 
began to prevail that the monasteries were no longer 
competent to supply the education which the im- 
proved state of society demanded. The primary 
object of the monastery was to train men for what 
was technically called the " religious life " — the life of 



OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE, 251 

a monk. Those who did not become monks availed 
themselves of the advantages offered in the monastic 
schools ; but still a monastic school was as much 
designed to make men monks as a training school at 
the present time is designed to make men school- 
masters, although some who are so trained betake 
themselves to other professions." * This was equally 
true of the monastic institutions at the universities ; 
hence the need of " colleges " for seculars free from 
monastic obligations. 

I would here recall to mind the distinction between 
the three kinds of mediaeval schools — interior monastic 
schools for the oblati, the exterior schools, and the 
canonical cathedral schools — and I would point out 
that a college more closely resembled the residential 
part of a cathedral school, such as Canterbury, than 
a monastery. True, the colleges were intended for 
those who meant to be " clerics ; " but this order, in 
those days, did not mean the regular and parochial 
clergy only, but comprised all the professions. 

By far the most important of the early college 
foundations of England was that of Walter de Merton, 
chancellor of the kingdom in 1264! — called "Domus 
Scholarium de Merton." j This foundation furnished 
a model for all succeeding colleges both in Oxford 
and Cambridge. Merton himself must have had his 

* Lives of the Archbishops, iii. 339. 

t The second charter dates 1274. 

X Preceded, however, some say, by an earlier foundation. 



252 MEDL'EVAL EDUCATION A.VP UNIVERSIilES. 

eye on the Sorbonne. Merton's House was substan- 
tially what we should now call a secular college. No 
" religious person," that is no monk or friar, was to 
be admitted. He had in view the supply of regular 
clergy, and we ma}/ say clerici generally, that is to 
say, the learned class. His aim was to produce a 
"constant succession of scholars devoted to the pur- 
suits of literature," " bound to employ themselves in 
the study of arts or philosophy, theology or the canon 
law ; the majority to continue in the arts and philo- 
sophy until passed on to the study of theology by the 
decision of the warden and fellows, and as the result 
of meritorious proficiency in the first-named subjects." 
It would be difficult even in these days to form a more 
'liberal conception of a college. Mr. Mullinger says 
that science was not included in the curriculum ; but 
there can be no doubt that arts and philosophy in 
those days covered the field of science. The " littera " 
(1254) of the Paris universitas, to which I have several 
times referred arts, comprised philosophia rationalis, 
moralis, and natiiralis. It was only the scientific 
professions of medicine and law, it seems to me, that 
were left out, in so far as these were practical and 
commercial pursuits.* "Within the walls of Merton," 
says Mr. Mullinger (p. 169), "were trained the minds 
that chiefly influenced the thought of the fourteenth 

* The Mendicants were students of both law and medicine. This 
fact may have affected Merton's views. The study of law always tended 
to lower the scientific and academic character of medigeval universities. 



OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. 253 

century. It was there that Duns Scotus, the ' Subtle 
Doctor,* was educated ; it was there that he first 
taught. Thence, too, came William of Occam, the 
revolutionizer of the philosophy of his age ; and 
Thomas Bradwardine, known throughout Christendom 
as the * Doctor Profundus,' whose influence might 
vie even with that of the ' Doctor Invincible/ " etc. 

We have said enough for the general purposes 
of these lectures. In thus briefly describing Merton, 
we have described the aim and constitution, allowing 
for minor differences, of the whole collegiate system 
of Oxford and Cambridge : in so far as the aim 
was not charitable, it was for the furtherance of the 
higher learning. University Hall, Oxford (1280), 
was to provide for '* four masters to live together, 
and study theology." It is interesting to note that 
originally there seems to have been no marked line 
of demarcation between the scholar and fellow of 
a college. The distinction first formally appears 
in the statutes of King's College, Cambridge. " It 
is not until after a three years' probation, during 
which time it has been ascertained whether the 
'scholar' be ingenio, capacitate sensus, moribus, con- 
ditionibus et sclentia, dignus, habilis, et idoneus FOR 
FURTHER STUDY, that the provost and fellows are 
empowered to elect him one of their number" 
(Mullinger, p. 309).* 

♦ Before the Reformation, permission to wealthy students to reside 
in colleges, even on payment of rent, was reluctantly granted. 



254 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

With these remarks and this quotation before him, 
I may leave the unprejudiced reader, who knows what 
the mediaeval word " arts " truly means in its modern 
translation, to form his own judgment of the proper 
destination of the great wealth of the Oxford and 
Cambridge Colleges. 

It is curious to note that in these latter days the 
non-collegiate or unattached system of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries has been revived. Under- 
graduates may now live in licensed lodging-houses, 
and we may yet see restored both in England and 
Scotland the hostels of the Middle Ages.* 

♦ What else I have to say on the English universities will be found 
under "University Studies," Siq. As bearing on the rise of the Cam- 
bridge schools, it may be mentioned [vide Willis's " Architectural His- 
tory ") that the Augustinian Priory of Barnewell was established in 1 1 12, 
the Benedictine Nunnery of St. Rhadegund in 1133, and the Augustinian 
House, called St. John's Hospital, in 1135. In the earlier half of 
the twelfth century, too, there was considerable literary activity at not 
a few cathedral and monastery centres (not to speak of the Royal Court). 
All this tended to centralize itself zi Oxford and Cambridge. 



LECTURE XIV. 

THE UxNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE. 

I THINK It of importance to give some attention to 
the history of the University of Prague, because (if 
we except Naples, already a subject of consideration 
in one of the preceding lectures, and Palentia, of 
which I have no knowledge) it was the first university 
formally founded. It was, moreover, quite the first 
founded after Europe had had experience of the 
university system. We may consequently expect to 
find in its constitution not only the conclusions to 
which the best minds had then come as regards the; 
higher education, but we shall also find in its organi- 
zation much that throws a retrospective light on 
questions in university history which have frequently 
given rise to discussion. The University of Prague 
was also the starting-point of the great German 
system ; and, indeed, when we look at this system 
in its full modern development, we are justified in 
saying that its formative idea is to be discerned in 
this the earliest German foundation. I shall be as 
19 



256 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

succinct as possible, believing that those who have 
followed the previous survey of university history 
will be able to see for themselves the significance of 
the facts, and to supply their own comments and 
conclusions. 

The University of Prague was founded in April 
1348, by Charles IV., who ascended the Bohemian 
throne in 1346. He founded it, as from the first, a 
studium generale of all the faculties, and confirmed 
his foundation the following year, conferring on it 
all the rights, privileges, and immunities which had 
been conferred by his ancestors from time to time 
on other universities. The university was not founded 
in response to a national demand. Charles had him- 
self been a student at Paris, and " now, in memory 
of his student-life in the rue de Fouarre, wished to 
have a copy of the university there, in his hereditary 
kingdom of Bohemia " (DoUinger, p. 7). 

But before Charles issued his charter, he had been 
in communication with the pope, and in the year 
prior to the formal institution (1347) had obtained 
from him a Bull, founding an university in all the 
faculties, and giving catholic validity to its degrees. 
He appointed the Archbishop of Prague chancellor. 
It will be remembered that in Paris the chancellor 
grew up with the university, simply retaining undei 
new and gradually restricted conditions the position 
he had held over the school of arts, out of which the 
university grew. We also saw that Pope Honorius HI. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE, 257 

appointed the Archdeacon of Bologna to discharge 
the functions of chancellor there, and that in Eng- 
land the ecclesiastical relations of the universities 
were even closer than on the Continent of Europe. 
The formal appointment of a chancellor at Prague 
by the pope was, accordingly, a matter of course. 
Indeed, the whole history of mediaeval univer- 
sities shows that the pope was the constant referee 
when questions of difficulty arose, even prior to 
any formal letters of privilege or protection issuing 
from him. He took it for granted that he was 
supreme arbiter, and as his interference generally 
brought with it protection, if not always privilege, 
it was not resented. If Paris was the "mother," 
the pope was the " father," of universities. And now, 
in 1346, we find Charles at once recognizing the 
hopelessness of founding a university which would 
have any academic status without the direct support 
of the papal chair. After this date, and until the 
Reformation, we find that important universities had 
usually two charters — the one papal, the other royal 
or imperial. 

Charles called professors of known eminence to 
Prague and gave endowments for their support. He 
appointed a professor of theology, but, in addition to 
this official, other teachers or professors belonging to 
the monastic orders lectured on the same subject in 
their cloisters, and had their teaching recognized for 
graduation. A professor of law was called from 



258 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

Bologna, and a professor of medicine was apjx)inted 
to represent the medical faculty, and as many pro- 
fessors of arts as there were liberal arts at that time 
recognized. These professors gave their lectures in 
their own dv/ellings, there being no public university 
buildings. To all the sovereign gave a fixed salary ; 
the collegiate churches and cloisters being required 
to contribute, as (by a strange coincidence) in these 
days the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge con- 
tribute to professorial salaries. The university was 
divided into the usual four faculties. He left it to 
the university itself to construct its statutes according 
to the best models. This was a recognition of its 
autonomy. 

The members of the university were divided into 
four nations. The highest official was the Rector, 
who was chosen half-yearly. Each of the nations 
chose an elector ; the four so chosen co-opted seven 
others, and the united body then selected five by 
whom the rector was chosen. The office of rector 
could not be filled by any one belonging to a religious 
order. The most important duty of the rector was 
jurisdiction over all members of the university, not 
only in ordinary cases of discipline, but also in civil 
and in criminal processes. A court was held by 
him twice a week. His next most important duties 
were to see that the statutes of the university were 
observed, to take precedence in all functions of the 
university, and to administer its property. A vice- 



THE UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE. 259 

rector was also appointed, and two collectors for the 
administration of the university purse. The primary 
assembly, whereby its statutes were made or altered, 
was the congregation {congregatio universitatis), in 
which masters and students had equal votes. By an 
edict of the archbishop, a special university council 
{concilium universitatis), consisting of eight members, 
two from each nation {procuratores nationum), was 
instituted, to be elected half-yearly. These nomi- 
nated their successors, and were almost always 
" masters " of the university. Ere long the half- 
yearly meetings of the congregation became a 
mere form, for the council of the university exer- 
cised sole, as well as supreme, power in conjunction 
with the rector, so that before the end of the four- 
teenth century, Prague, which was originally a uni- 
versitas magistrorum ei scholarium^ became, practically, 
a universitas magistrorum alone. 

Each of the four faculties elected a dean. In 
point of dignity the Deans came next to the rector, 
just as the rector was of less dignity (though of more 
power) than the chancellor, who conferred degrees. 
In the discharge of their special official work both 
the rector and the deans were wholly independent. 
The deans were chosen once or twice a year, and 
with them were chosen two collectors for each faculty, 
to manage the receipts and disbursements specially 
belonging to it. There were also other faculty officers. 

The university gave two degrees — the bachelorship, 



26o MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

and the degree of master or doctor. The only 
difference between the title of master and doctor in 
Prague was, that the title of master was used in the 
faculties of theology and arts, that of doctor in the 
faculties of law and medicine. In the faculty of law 
there were two degrees, the doctorate in canon law 
and that in civil law. 

For these degrees an examination was held. Four 
examiners were appointed, one out of each nation, and 
these were presided over by the dean of the faculty 
in which the student sought promotion. Those 
who passed for the bachelor's degree were arranged 
in order of merit, and entered in this order in the 
faculty graduation book. The fee for the bachelor- 
ship was twenty Bohemian groschen, which was paid 
to the faculty, but was always remitted in the case of 
poor students. The young bachelor had to swear (i) 
that he would give lessons for two years in the 
university ; * (2) that he would accept a like degree 
from no other university ; (3) that he would do his 
utmost to promote the interests of his university. 
The examination consisted in " determining." f The 
candidate's promoter was generally the master whom 
he had most regularly attended (or in whose house 
he had lived), and the bachelorship was conferred, 
not by the university through the chancellor, but 
by the Faculty. 

* Consider the bearing of this on the question of " inception in arts." 
t See next lecture. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE, 261 

The mastership for which the bachelor now began 
to prepare himself, by teaching and by attending 
lectures, was conferred by the chancellor — the ex- 
aminers being, again, four in number, one from each 
nation. The chancellor conferred the liceiicia docendi^ 
and the bachelor was then called a licentiate. It was 
not necessary that the licentiate should take the 
mastership, which was only a ceremonial act of admis- 
sion or " promotion " to the body of masters. Without 
the title he was free to teach, and he often post- 
poned taking the mastership because of the expense, 
although, until he took it, he could not exercise his 
rights as the member of a faculty. 

Most of the masters who taught kept houses in 
which students could lodge, and in these houses they 
also carried on their teaching. The custom of living 
in masters' houses must have been found to be a 
necessary protection, for in 1385 a statute was passed 
prohibiting students from living anywhere except 
with a master or a bachelor, unless he had a special 
dispensation. 

The colleges afterwards founded were colleges for 
masters. 

Almost, if not quite, from the beginning, the Faculty 
of law in Prague constituted itself into a separate 
university, which had nothing in common with the 
other three faculties except the chancellor. And yet 
the statutes gave them a recognized place in the 
university as a whole. It was called the jurisien- 



262 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

universitdt, and had a collegiate house assigned to 
it by Charles in 1373. 

The general body of students might attend what- 
ever lectures they pleased, but they had to be present 
at not fewer than three a week. The object of this 
was to prevent people enrolling themselves as students 
for the sole purpose of escaping municipal jurisdiction, 
and living under the independent and privileged 
jurisdiction of the university. For those studying 
for degrees special subjects and classes were further 
prescribed. 

As to instruction : the general method was by 
dictation, the students writing down and afterwards 
"getting up " the lectures of their masters. The scarcity 
and cost of manuscript books made this course, as I 
have frequently pointed out, inevitable. In lecturing 
from any author, a master was free to give his own 
opinions ; a bachelor, whose business was incipere in 
artibus, was restricted to the letter of the works he 
read to the younger students, and had to submit his 
proposed readings with them to the dean of his faculty 
for approval. Just as the bachelors had to teach for 
two years, so masters who received regular stipends, 
or had a place in a college, were compelled to teach 
for at least two years. The maglster or doctor 
regens was called professor. The masters arranged 
with their respective faculties their proposed courses, 
but a certain restricted competition was allowed — 
two masters (and never more than three) being 



THE UNIVERSITY OF FRAGUE. 263 

allowed to give similar courses. The students paid 
fees to the masters they attended, but the poor were 
constantly exempted. 

The "disputations" which were carried on in 
the lecture halls had two objects — the clearing 
up of difficulties, and dialectic practice. Bachelors 
before being presented for their degree had to furnish 
evidence that they had taken part in these disputa- 
tions at least six times. They were held on Tuesdays 
and Thursdays. The bachelors who were going for- 
ward to the mastership had to be always present at 
the disputations, and take part in them. In addition 
to the disputations ordered by the university, each 
master might (with permission) hold special dispu- 
tations called " exercises " with his own pupils. 
Once a year in January a grand disputation was 
held, called disputatio de qiiolibet, in which all the 
regenting masters had to take part. The question 
or questions were submitted in writing to the president 
of the disputation four days before it took place, and 
the discussion used to extend over several days. 

As to property : the university, through its rector 
and collectors, administered what was general — such 
as the funds destined for the salaries of the ordinary 
professors. Each faculty and each college, however, 
had also its separate money-chest. The university 
income came in the form of matriculation and 
graduation fees, fines, and taxes.* It was not usual 

• I do not know from what sources the ' * taxes " were obtained. 



264 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

for a student to enter the "higher" faculties until a 
minor course in arts had been completed. But it is 
not distinctly stated whether it was usual to go 
beyond the bachelorship before entering the " higher " 
faculties. But we know that at, and even before, 
the date of the Prague foundation, it was quite usual 
in Paris to go forward to the degrees in law and 
medicine without taking the mastership in arts ; but 
not to the degrees in theology. 

We may learn something as to this, I think, from 
the order of precedence in public ceremonials. First 
came the 

Masters of Theology. 
Doctors of Canon Lav/. 

„ Civil Law. 

Masters of Medicine and the Deaa 
„ the Faculty of Arts. 

. Licentiates of Theology. 

„ Canon Law. 

„ Civil Law. 

„ Medicine. 

(Formed) Bachelors of Theology, 

Masters of Arts. 
(Running) Bachelors of Theology. 
Licentiates of Arts. 
Bachelors of Law. 

„ Medicine. 

„ Arts. 

If we remember that the titles doctor, master, and 



THE UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE. 265 

licentiate all denoted the same degree of attainment, 
and differed only in so far as the "doctor" or "master" 
had improved his university statics by going through 
the ceremony of " promotion " after he had taken the 
licencia, we may conclude (i) that the order of 
precedence as regards faculties was theology, law, 
medicine, and arts ; (2) that before entering the 
theological faculty students took the licence, if not 
also the mastership, in arts ; (3) that the students of 
law and medicine took only the bachelorship in arts 
before entering their professional faculties : this is 
very interesting, as throwing light on the European 
custom of the time ; (4) that deans of faculties did 
not sit with the procurators and rector as governing 
the university. In this respect Charles went back to 
the older constitution of Paris. 

It is not my purpose to follow the history of the 
University of Prague, nor indeed of any university, 
except in so far as certain crises in their gradual 
development down to 1350 throw light on the origin, 
constitution, and practical working of universities 
generally. In this connection, the secession from 
Prague in 1409 is as interesting and instructive as 
that from Bologna to Padua in the beginning of the 
thirteenth century, or the disruption of Paris in 1229, 
or the secessions from Oxford and Cambridge. In 
consequence of representations made to him by the 
Bohemians who constituted only one nation, while 
the Germans were divided into three, the sovereign 



266 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

ordered that the Germans should henceforth be 
formed into only one nation, and the Bohemians 
into three. This, it will be seen, at once transferred 
the whole power of the university to the Sclavs. 
The German teachers and pupils at once left Prague, 
some going to strengthen the newly formed uni- 
versities at Vienna, Erfurt, and Heidelberg; but 
the greater portion settling at Leipsic, and so laying 
the foundation of the university there. The statutes 
and constitution of Leipsic were modelled on those 
of Prague. The constitution of the first German 
university could easily be shown to survive in the 
modern universities of Germany in very many par- 
ticulars. The chief difference is the direct inter- 
vention of the State in the conducting of examinations 
in the various faculties. 

In the course of the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries there grew up in Europe ten universities ; 
while in the fourteenth century we find eighteen 
added ; and in the fifteenth century twenty-nine arise, 
including St. Andrews (141 1), Glasgow (1454), 
Aberdeen (1477.) The great intellectual activity of 
the fourteenth century, which led to the rise of so 
many universities, coincides with the first revival of 
letters, or rather was one manifestation of the revival. 
We see this period illustrated by the name of 
Petrarch, who, with many other men, began to feel 
the barrenness of scholasticism and the significance 



THE UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE, 267 

of classical literature — an intellectual awakening which 
in the religious sphere found its most prominent ex- 
ponents in Wickliffe and Huss. The new current had 
to run underground during the French wars and the 
War of the Roses, but its influence was felt, in the 
teaching at least of the Continental universities, 
throughout the fifteenth century, till it culminated in 
the second revival — the period of the Humanists and 
the Lutheran Reformation. The great increase in the 
number of universities in the fifteenth century was not, 
howev^er, solely due to the influence of new ideas, but 
also to the desire of the papal power to break down 
the domination of Paris, especially after the Council 
of Basel. 

Were it not that it would occupy too much space, 
I might here comment on the constitution of the 
Prague University, with a view especially to throwing 
light on that of Paris. Meanwhile I omit this. 



LECTURE XV. 

UNIVERSITY STUDIES AND THE CONDITIONS OF 
GRADUATION. 

In this, as in other university characteristics, there 
was an historical continuity. The work done in the 
mediaeval universities by the candidates for the 
bachelorship was the same as that which I have 
already described as constituting the trivial curri- 
culum of monastery and cathedral schools, but some- 
what more extensive and better organized. There 
was a distinct educational advance. But it has to be 
observed that, as in an account of the curriculum of 
the pre-university schools of Europe it was necessary 
to be guided by the practice of the best seminaries, 
so, in the case of the universities, we have to bear in 
mind that while the trivlum — " grammar (Including 
ancient literature), rhetoric, and dialectic " — has an 
imposing sound, the actual work accomplished, and 
consequently the attainments of bachelors, whose 
average age over Europe generally could not be more 
than seventeen or eighteen, were not very high. 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES. 269 

There was, I say, no sudden breach of continuity in 
the curriculum of instruction in so far as it contem- 
plated a general education, and there was no better 
education in the humanities to be had in the univer- 
sities than Bernard of Chartres was giving about the 
time the University of Paris began to exist. No 
doubt one or two teachers had preserved the tradition 
of Chartres till the end of the twelfth century ; but 
this is all that can be said, if we are to attach due 
value to the complaints of John of Salisbury, who may 
be regarded as the humanist of that period, and after- 
wards of Grossteste, Roger Bacon, and others. 

It was in the higher development and specializa- 
tion of medicine, civil law, and theology (with phi- 
losophy) that the university movement broke away 
from the mediaeval and monkish system. 

At the university seats, the more important parts 
of the grammars of Donatus and Priscian were, as 
at the monastery and cathedral schools, dictated, 
explained, and learned by heart ; and this after the 
boys had left the grammar school and become " arts " 
students. In the earlier part of the thirteenth 
century, Priscian's grammar was reduced to verse 
(leonine) by a regent of Paris, Alexander de Villedieu 
(de Villa dei), and this book became, up to the middle 
of the sixteenth century, the great text-book. Dia- 
lectic and rhetoric were taught from epitomes. Por- 
tions of Cicero, Virgil, etc., continued to be read ; 
but they were used, as in the cathedral and monastery 



270 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

schools, simply as illustrations of grammar and 
rhetoric rules, not studied as literature. 

It is clear to any one who has looked into co- 
temporary writings that the tendency of universities 
was at first, and for long, away from literature and 
humanism. Grammar and rhetoric were formal, 
— a study of rules and inaccurate etymologies. 
Dialectic was logic in its most barren form. The 
true intellectual life of universities was to be found 
in the specialized studies of medicine, theology, 
including philosophy or the higher dialectic, and 
law. It is quite true, as I believe I have shown, that 
the grammatical and literary instruction of the pre- 
university schools was, except in the hands of a teacher 
here and there, restricted, arid, and uncultivating. 
But it would be a mistake to suppose that the rise 
of university teaching effected much change. On the 
contrary, the method of procedure was perpetuated ; 
and this even above the "trivial" stage, when we 
should have expected the study of the " humanities " 
to enter. Humane studies were entirely overshadowed 
in Paris and the universities which followed that 
model, by philosophy, which was generally limited 
to dialectic disputations on definitions, the nature of 
ideas, and the relative questions of metaphysical the- 
ology. The neglect of literature led to barbarism in 
style. The report which John of Salisbury gives of 
Paris in 1 136 is only one of numerous evidences of this. 
These studies, however, unfruitful as they might be in 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES, 271 

their immediate results, cultivated acuteness of mind, 
loosened old conviction, and laid the foundations of 
modern rationalism. 

In giving instruction, the order of the day was 
generally as follows : — 

The regent usually met his pupils three times 
daily — at sunrise, at noon, and towards the evening — 
and at one of these meetings determining (defining) 
and disputation occupied the time. There can be no 
doubt that the want of books gave great opportunities 
to a regent of high teaching capacity to show what he 
could do. It also compelled in the pupil an amount 
of memory-work, and of reflection on the lessons 
dictated, which must have been highly effectual for 
the formal discipline of the mind. 

Robert de Cour<^on, the papal legate, fixed in the 
earlier part of the thirteenth century the books to be 
lectured on in the Paris faculty of arts for the master- 
ship — viz. Aristotle, in so far as he bore on dialectic 
and ethics; "Topics" (fourth book); Priscian (with 
the abridgment) ; and other works, by authors now 
unknown, on philosophy, rhetoric, mathematics, and 
grammar. The Metaphysics and Physics of Aristotle 
were proscribed, but the interdict was subsequently 
rem.oved. The most popular text-book of logic was, 
for centuries, the " Summulae " of Petrus Hispanus. 
The reforms of the papal legate were carried out 
before a distinct faculty of theology was formed. 

But theology was, yet, recognized by him as a separate 
20 



2 72 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

study (facultas in its earlier sense), and none allowed to 
lecture in it " publicly " till they were thirty-five years 
of age. The highest study of the Universities of Paris 
and England was theology ; but let us never forget 
that theology comprehended philosophy, and indeed 
frequently touched the whole range of knowledge. 
At first and for long, however, theology was apt to be 
buried under dialectic disputations in a narrow sense. 

Text-books of theology, or " Sentences," had 
come from various hands long before this time ; 
the science had been thoroughly systematized and 
reduced to a corpus by the famous Peter the Lombard, 
after many attempts by others. His " Liber Senten- 
tiarum " became, from 1 150, the universal text-book of 
the schools — text-book of philosophy as well as of 
theology — although his systematization was based 
very largely on Scripture and the Fathers. The 
writing to dictation, the discussion, and reproduction 
of this book, seem to have been the great end of 
theological study, the master or doctor of theology 
confining himself to commentaries on the text ; but, 
by means of these commentaries, a great deal of 
Aristotelianism, pure or spurious, was always taught. 

In 1257-1270, the religious orders, after a struggle, 
secured, as I have previously mentioned, the recogni- 
tion of their own claustral teaching by the University 
of Paris, and became an integral part of it, sharing 
in its privileges. But in order to preserve the supre- 
macy of " arts," which up to that time included 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES. 273 

theology, the "faculty" of theology was created, and 
assigned a subordinate place in the university organi- 
zation to that of arts. But none the less did theology 
continue to be regarded as queen of the sciences. 

Again, about the time that Petrus Lombardus 
issued his Corpus Theologiae, there emanated from 
Bologna (11 57) a Corpus juris Canonici, which went 
by the name of the Decretum. Thereafter, canon 
law, which had been previously studied as part of the 
general theological course, now became a separate and 
specialized study under the direct mandate of the pope. 
Hence arose the faculty of the decree or the canon law. 

Meanwhile the old Theodosian Code had been 
superseded by the labours of Irnerius and his pupils, 
and the issue of the "Pandects" of Justinian, about the 
middle of the same century, gave rise to the faculty 
of civil law. 

Even the higher teaching of all the universities 
was confined to the dictation and exposition of the 
recognized authoritative books which I have named. 
Intellectual activity had to expend itself — not, how- 
ever, fruitlessly — on the definitions and propositions 
involved in the dogmatic utterances of the recognized 
authorities. No doubt these discussions gave occasion 
for much dialectic absurdity as well as subtlety. They 
are regarded with feelings of contempt by some. But 
this is to misread history. For such dialectic, even in 
its crudest form, was in marked and significant con- 



274 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

trast to the dead conformity of the centuries preced- 
ing universities, and familiarized the minds of the 
students to a quasi-independence in speculation which 
had great issues. When Thomas Aquinas had written, 
and Duns Scotus speculated, theology tended to pass 
more and more into metaphysics. Scotus Erigena 
had at last triumphed. Prior to the intellectual 
movement which led to the specialization of theology 
as including dialectic, the theological teaching was 
simply a study of the Scriptures and the Fathers. To 
study, copy, compile, and abridge the latter was the 
task of the professed theologian, and what was sought 
was not proof, but authority. Scholastic theology, 
on the other hand, meant the systematizing of theo- 
logy on the basis of reason as well as of authority, 
and its method of procedure was by way of axioms, 
definitions, and deductions. 

Graduation* — For the B. A. degree it may perhaps 
seem to us that the university requirements were con- 
temptible, viz. grammar, wijth elementary logic and 
rhetoric ; but if we keep in mind the youth of the 
candidates, the want of books, and the method of 
teaching, we shall be satisfied that even this minor 
degree marked the conclusion of a period of hard and 
sustained work. There was no food for the mind, but 
there was a great deal of severe discipline of the 
memory and intellect. After a disciplinary course of 
three or four years, the young student " determined," 

♦ See also Lecture XII, 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES. 275 

that IS to say, he defined or determined, logical terms 
and propositions in the presence of his master and 
fellow-students, and maintained his definitions against 
objectors. This having been done satisfactorily, he 
was named a bachelor by the masters of that subject, 
and had now the right to wear a round cap, and not 
only the right, but the obligation, to teach freshmen. 
He was then said incipere hi artibiis* 

For the Mastership his qualification was teaching 
in this private fashion (generally under some master) 
for a few years (apparently three), and attending public 
lectures, till he considered himself qualified to apply 
for the licencia. In 121 5, Robert de Courcon, the 
papal legate v/ho had been appointed to settle differ- 
ences that arose in Paris, decreed that none should 
lecture or teach, i.e. publicly as a magister, till he 
was twenty-one, and had attended six years in arts 
and had passed an examination. 

This examination consisted -in maintaining theses 
or disputations in public. The candidate was then 
presented by the other masters to the Chancellor 
for the licence, which gave him freedom to teach 
publicly all and sundry, and made him a member 
of the university in the fullest sense — the master- 
ship being merely (as I have previously explained) 
a ceremonial act following the licence. In the 
fourteenth century, when the graduation system was 

• This is my interpretation of "inception " at Paris. I fail, after many 
perusals, to understand Mr.Mullinger's account of inception at Cambridge. 



276 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

more fully organized, the artist who desired a master- 
ship (unless he confined himself to a mastership in 
grammar alone*) had to study first arithmetic and 
music, then geometry and perspective, and finally 
astronomy ; but the higher dialectic seems to have 
always governed the other schools. From the letter 
of the Paris masters (1254) we learn that arts included 
ethics and the philosophy of nature. 

It is difficult to say whether all the above-named 
subjects were compulsory, as preparatory for the licen- 
tiateship (or mastership) in Arts. A decided advance 
seems to have been made in the mathematical studies 
at the universities in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries ; but, at best, the mathematical attainment 
was very narrow in its range. Roger Bacon (died 
1294) complains that in his time very few went 
beyond the fifth proposition of the first book of 
Euclid ; and for two or three centuries after his time, 
the six books were regarded as a very ample mathe- 
matical equipment. There can be no doubt that 
metaphysics, in some form or other, dominated the 
upper schools, and indeed the whole university both 
before and after St. Thomas Aquinas. 

In theology^ a course of five years was required by 
De Courgon to qualify for private, and a course of eight 
years for a public, course of lectures. 

* This grammar degree for those who wished to be teachers of gram* 
mar schools existed, I think, only in England. It was a schoolmaster's 
degree. 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES. 277 

The above brief sketch is of general apph'cation, 
and though specially relating to Paris, is in the main 
true of university studies as a whole down to the 
Humanistic revival at the beginning of the fifteenth 
.century. 

A slight sketch of the peculiarities of Bologna is, 
however, necessary in order to show the influence it 
had on subsequent university organizations. The 
course of instruction there consisted of lectures, repe- 
titions, and disputations. It was only towards the 
end of the thirteenth century that the word "bacha- 
larius" is found at Bologna, and then confined to 
mark a stage in the study of law, not of arts. A 
student who had studied under the doctors (and the 
lecturing and disputation system seems to have been 
very strictly organized) for a certain number of years 
might get permission from the Rector, on payment of 
a certain sum, to conduct " repetitions." A repetitio 
was the taking up of some point or text, already ex- 
pounded, generally in a doctor's lecture, and con- 
sidering all possible difficulties suggested by it, and 
all possible objections,* The text of a repetitio 
was announced some days beforehand. After one 
year of this work, the aspirant was called Bachalarius. 
For the Licencia, the bachelor continued to attend 
the doctors, and had to take part in the periodical 
disputations, which could be held only under the 

• A somewhat similar kind of disputation was known even in the 
private provincial schools of law under the empire. 



278 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

presidency of the doctors. Scholars were also free to 
take part in these. The qucestio of a disputation was, 
like the text of a repetitio, always posted up some 
days before the meeting. 

After having studied law eight years in ally the 
bachelor applied for the licencia. For this there were 
two examinations, a private and then a public. The 
candidate selected a doctor as his promoter. Two 
texts were prescribed by him on which the candidate 
had to write a criticism. He then appeared before the 
college of doctors. The promoting doctor had alone 
the right to examine his candidate generally, but the 
other assembled doctors present might put questions 
on the prescribed texts. They then voted, and the 
candidate, if successful, became a licentiate. The next 
or public step (the Conventus) was for the candidate 
to go, in festive manner, to the cathedral, and there 
deliver a lecture on some point of law, and submit 
to any discussion arising out of the lecture into which 
the students might draw him. This was the public 
examination, evidently of a merely ceremonial charac- 
ter ; and after it, the archdeacon proclaimed the new 
doctor and his right to the insignia. The hat and the 
ring and the book were then formally presented to 
him by his promoter or promoters. The public exami- 
nation might follow close on the private one.* 

* The doctors seem to have divided the graduation fees among them, 
the promoter getting a very large proportion of the whole. 

The above order of graduation was in existence in the thirteenth 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES, 279 

As to England : in the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries,* the want of grammar schools throughout 
England led to a large influx of boys of eleven or 
twelve years of age to Oxford and Cambridge. 
There were numerous monastery and cathedral 
schools, but these were generally in a decayed or 
decaying condition ; and it can easily be understood 
that if a boy had to leave Yorkshire or Sussex for 
his education, he would prefer wending his way at 
once to the famous centres, where preparatory in- 
struction was fully organized, to entering himself at 
a cathedral school of less reputation. To meet the 
wants of these boys, the schools of the Grammatici 
were numerous at both Oxford and Cambridge, and 
these the boy attended until he was qualified to 
enter the university as an arts student or artist. 

The reflex effect of the competition of the uni- 
versities on provincial, cathedral, and monastic schools 
can easily be understood. These found their work 
done for them, and largely ceased to do it. The weak 
" secondary " schools (as we should now call them) 
became weaker. " As the universities," says Warton, 
"began to flourish, . . . the monasteries, of course, 

century. It was only after 1219, apparently, that the archdeacon had a 
part to play in the ceremony. Even then his duty was purely formal 
and ofificial. Abuses in granting the degree had arisen, and the pope 
appointed the archdeacon to an office similar to that of the cathedral 
chancellor at Paris. 

* And we may add the fifteenth. William Bingham, who founded 
Clare Hall, Cambridge, says that in 1439 he passed seventy deserted 
schools in travelling from Hampton to Ripon, by way of Coventry. 



28o MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

grew inattentive to studies which were more strongly 
encouraged, more commodiously pursued, and more 
successfully cultivated in other places." To meet 
this evil to some extent, the abbeys and monasteries 
and cathedrals began to send boys to Oxford and 
Cambridge with small allowances, and after 1335 
every Benedictine and Augustinian monastery was 
ordered to send docile boys to the universities in the 
proportion of not less than one in twenty of the 
Vv'hole community (Willis's "Cambridge"). It was 
only after the age for matriculation was heightened, 
that the secondary schools of England reached a 
standard much higher than that of a superior primary 
school. We see also in Scotland a good secondary 
school system made impossible, up to the present 
day, by the action of the universities, and we have 
even in recent years seen that action defended by 
disinterested professors. Neither in England nor 
Scotland have we yet organized a secondary system 
comparable to that existing during the first three 
centuries after Christ under the Flavian and Antonine 
dynasties and their immediate successors. Thus the 
standard of local or provincial culture is depressed, 
and the first year's course at our Scottish seats of 
learning brings discredit on the very name of univer- 
sity. After all, is it much better at Oxford and Cam- 
bridge? What are the private records of the "little 
go " } The universities themselves are depressed by 
the dead weight of the incompetent on whom they 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES. z%\ 

spend their best energies. It was so also in the four- 
teenth century. The boys at the grammar schools of 
the university had to rush their preparation, and as 
"they were not grounded in their first rudiments at 
the proper time, they built a tottering edifice on an 
insecure foundation." * 

A boy who had gone the regular course in the 
grammar schools would find himself qualified for the 
university generally about the age of fourteen. He 
then matriculated and entered himself under a Master 
of Arts, by whom he was prepared during a period 
of four years for Determinations, i.e, the B.A. degree. 
In Oxford he had to pass the half-way house of 
Responsions. The examination at Responsions (and 
here we simply summarize Mr. Anstey's account) 
had reference to grammar and arithmetic, and until 
he passed the examination the scholar was called 
" sophista generalis ; " after this his designation was 
" questionist." The second examination embraced 
rhetoric and logic (and probably music) ; and was 
called "determinations" because of the questions put 
to the candidate to be determined. Mr. Anstey says, 
"It seems to me that at Paris determination simply 
meant defining in logic and rhetoric, and maintaining 
the definition against the master or other determiners;" 
and this quite accords with the conclusion to which 
I had myself come in the case of Paris. But Mr. 
Mullinger (p. 354) points out that at Cambridge the 

• Richard of Bury (died 1345), quoted by Mullinger, p. 206. 



it5= MEDI.^VAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

questionist was first required to answer questions — 
respondere ad qiicestionem — and this seems to have 
been the true examination for the bachelorship. When 
he had done this satisfactorily, he was then required 
for a certain number of days determinare qitcestionemy 
that is to say, to preside over meetings when the 
quaestio was put, and to sum up and decide. It is 
only in this presiding over meetings that the Cam- 
bridge practice really differed from that of Paris and 
Oxford. 

The bachelor who was still in statu pupillari now 
devoted three years to attendance on lectures and 
disputations — studying geometry, astronomy, and 
philosophy, in the old sense of that term, viz. physics, 
ethics, and metaphysics. At every stage of the 
student's career, text-books were prescribed, and no 
departure from these allowed. The master read a 
portion of the text to his scholars, and then proceeded 
to prelect on it, and finally raised points for class 
discussion. At a time when there were few books, 
much must have depended on the acquired learning 
and teaching-power of the master whom the bachelors 
elected to attend. The method of teaching was, so 
far as it went, admirable. 

Three years having elapsed in such studies, the 
bachelor was recommended by a certain number of 
masters to the Chancellor, who granted him a licence 
to "incept," i.e, to begin lecturing and disputing in 
arts in the presence of an audience of ** masters.*' 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES. 283 

This he did for a year or more before he was recog- 
nized as a " master." Mr. Anstey refers the festivi- 
ties, fees and presents imposed on the candidate to 
the period of inception, and does not point to any 
ceremony of magistration.* The Master of Arts 
might then remain at *the university as a regent, or 
go out to the world as one of the regular clergy 
or as a schoolmaster. If, however, he desired to 
continue his studies, he entered one of the higher 
faculties — medicine, law, or theology — and then went 
through a course substantially similar to that of the 
arts ; " m.asters " in each of these " higher " faculties 
being -ultimately called doctors, to distinguish them 
from Masters of arts.f 

I have followed Mr. Anstey in the above summary 
of the master's course and inception so far as Oxford 
is concerned. Mr. Mullinger gives a somewhat dif- 
ferent account of the proceedings at Cambridge, and 
one more closely in accord with the continental 
practice. The chief difterence is that Mr. Anstey 
represents the candidate as being declared "master" 
after an exercise at public lecturing and disputa- 
tion, and says that this was followed by a year's 
lecturing. Is Mr. Anstey not mistaken on this point ? 
Again, Mr. Mullinger points out that the bachelor 

* At Paris the *' licence " was given after disputations and lecturing, 
and the ceremony of "magistration," with all its attendant expenses, 
followed immediately thereafter. 

t But for long the word "master" in theology was preferred to 
" doctor " at Oxford. 



284 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

might lecture cursori^. It was a matter of course in 
Paris that he should lend assistance in preparing the 
sophisters, and this was part of his preparation for the 
licence. In Prague also, founded on the Parisian 
model, the young bachelor was required to promise that 
he would teach for two years. I do not quite under- 
stand the meaning which Mr. Mullinger would attach 
to the bachelor's lectures ciirsorie. From my own 
reading I would explain the word as simply mean- 
ing lectures delivered while the bachelor was running 
his course for master. On the other hand, it is worthy 
of remark that in Prague the bachelor was always 
restricted to the text-book, and prohibited from 
explaining or expounding. Hence, perhaps, a secon- 
dary meaning to the expression " cursory lecturing." 

When now we survey the school grammar course, 
the university baccalaurean requirements, the subse- 
quent studies for the Arts mastership, and thereafter 
the repetition of each graduation step of the Arts 
course in the higher faculties, and compare this with 
the scholastic curriculum of the eleventh century, we 
must admit that the education of Europe had in the 
course of little more than a century become revo- 
lutionized. The academic organization was indeed 
already, in all essential respects, complete, and we 
cannot but wonder at the activity of mind which in 
so short a time produced such remarkable changes. 
Along with the new organization there arose, as v/e 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES. 285 

have seen, the idea of a literary repubh'c independent 
of monastic rule, and a freedom of speculation within 
this republic out of which has come our modern life. 
From time to time the Church, as represented by its 
central authority at Rome, had its own difficulties with 
individuals, especially at Paris and Oxford ; but on 
the whole, up to the fifteenth century, it was the nurse 
of universities, and regarded them with favour. It 
threw its shield over them more than once. We may 
indeed suspect that its patronage had often political 
aims, and that it hoped, by securing a direct and 
ultramontanist allegiance, to weaken the nationalism 
of the academic clerics. If the pope had this pur- 
pose, then, spite of occasional successes, he ultimately 
failed. The sporadic humanism of the thirteenth 
century reappeared in the end of the fifteenth in full 
force, and, aided by the art of printing, was, then and 
for ever, too strong for pope or monk. It has had its 
own battle since, and has it now^-a battle that has to 
be fought with Protestant obscurantism as well as with 
ultramontanism. But it cannot fail to be victorious, 
for it represents the mobility of the spirit of man as 
opposed to crystallized forms, and the essential freedom 
of mind as opposed to the tyrannous usurpation of the 
empire of reason by mere authority. The Catholic 
idea of the spiritual unity of mankind was certainly a 
grand one, but it is not to be accomplished by utter- 
ances ex cathedra, nor, indeed, on any terms yet dis- 
cernible by the eye of either historian or philosopher. 



286 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

Any further consideration of the work done in the 
universities in the latter portion of the Middle Ages, 
in so far as they were the centres of speculation, or 
reflected the ecclesiastical and political movements 
of successive generations, would demand special and 
extended treatment. The historian would have to 
take for his guide the special histories of medicine, of 
Roman law, of philosophy and philology, down to 
about the year 1500; and, thereafter, the history 
of the Humanistic revival and its varied fortunes. 
Especially after the revival of letters, the annalist 
would have to acknowledge that the history of pro- 
gress of the human intellect no longer finds its ex- 
clusive centre in the universities. Outside these, 
though no doubt largely influenced by them, there 
has run a parallel influence, literary, scientific, and 
philosophical, which would have to be taken account 
of. We see an analogy in political history during the 
last century ; for this is no longer to be studied in 
the formal acts of kings, cabinets, and councils, but 
in the activity of the Publicists outside these, who 
first supply the ideas, and then largely shape the 
policy, of States.* 

The mediaeval universities gave a liberal interpre- 
tation to " Arts," I have said ; but I do not mean it to 

* Even in 1623 the University of Oxford, in acknowledging a 
presentation copy of Bacon's *'De Augmentis," says, "She {i.e. the 
university) readily acknowledgeth that, though the Muses are born in 
Oxford, they grow elsewhere." 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES. 287 

be inferred that they consciously aimed at free and 
encyclopaedic investigation. The idea of a university 
as an academy of free scientific inquiry may, in a 
sense, have existed at Athens, or, at least, at 
Alexandria, but, strictly speaking, it is a modern 
conception. The universities of the Middle Ages 
had to discharge their functions in subordination to 
the Church. Nor did they attempt, except in the 
department of metaphysics, to start new questions of 
a fundamental kind. The business of the doctors 
of law was to expound the civil law of Justinian 
and the Decretum of Gratian, and if they extended 
their area at all, to extend it by means of interpre- 
tations and commentaries. In medicine, Galen and 
Hippocrates and Avicenna, or manuals based on 
these writers, were expounded, and extended by new 
observations. In theology, the decrees of the councils 
were expounded and commented on, and the authority 
of the Fathers brought into requisition in support of 
them, the great text-book being the Sententise of Peter 
the Lombard and afterwards the Summa of Aquinas. 
As regards the preliminary course of studies in arts 
which terminated in the bachelorship, it was confined 
very much, as we have seen, to the old trivium — 
grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. These subjects also 
were taught from authoritative books, the learners 
taking ample notes from the dictation of the masters, 
and "getting these up." It was only in connection 
with the philosophical questions closely related to 
21 



288 MEDIMVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES, 

theology, that discussions early arose which led to free 
thought, and foreshadowed heresies. The practice of 
disputation in the schools unquestionably promoted 
freedom. Not only those seeking the higher degree 
of masters, but the students, had to debate questions 
in public and take sides, one of which at least might 
lean to heterodoxy. They were playing with danger- 
ous weapons, as it turned out. But during the first 
centuries of university life the papal authority had 
no fear of universities. St. Andrews, in Scotland, 
founded so late as 141 1, was founded by the pope 
(spite of all that had happened at Paris) for the 
defence of the faith. So with Heidelberg five and 
twenty years before. 

The true Catholic attitude to all investigation was, 
and is, one admitting of great advances in every 
department of learning, while checking all true free- 
dom of thought. It is well described by Mabillon 
when speaking of the use of reason in theology : " Hie 
autem rationis usus malus non est si coercitus intra 
terminos et a regulis limitatus. . . . Quiescere non 
potest unquam hominum ratio ; minus sufferre leges, 
aegerrime limites et terminos. Attamen in theologia 
pati debet eosdem et a fide accipere." * He also, 
quite consistently with Catholic interests, guards the 
faithful against dialectic and philosophy, and looks 
with little favour on the practice of disputation. 

Even in these days, outside Catholic restrictions, 

• " De Studiis Monasticis," pt. ii. c. vi., Latin Trans, of 1702. 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES. 289 

the function of universities in the body politic is still 
debated. There seems to be a growing consensus of 
opinion, however, in favour of the view that they must 
be at one and the same time scientific institutes and 
training schools for the business of life. 

The latter function of universities — the training 
of the youth of the country for their public duties — 
has been very well expressed in the North American 
Review for October, 1842. "In the colleges," the 
writer says, " is determined the character of most of 
the persons who are to fill the professions, teach the 
schools, write the books, and do most of the business 
of legislation for the whole body of the people. The 
general direction of literature and politics, the prevail- 
ing habits and modes of thought throughout the 
country, are in the hands of men whose social position 
and early advantages have given them an influence, 
of the magnitude and permanency of which the pos- 
sessors themselves are hardly conscious." If this be 
true — as it undoubtedly is — it becomes us to look 
upon these institutions even with anxiety, and to 
cease regarding them as merely large schools in 
which knowledge is bought and sold. The prepara- 
tion for public life must be an organized preparation. 

As academic institutes, again, devoted to the in- 
vestigation and propagation of truth, they are to be 
jealously guarded. Especially in these days, when the 
influence of the few must yield to the voice of the 
many, it is imperative on all who wish well to their 



290 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

country to hedge round with privilege all centres of 
intellectual and moral power. It is only thus that 
their freedom can be secured. They are in their 
essence the friends of true liberty, and the sworn 
foes of despotism, whether autocratic or democratic. 
Withdraw organization, privilege, and protection, and 
they are dissolved as universities, whatever else they 
may become. On the other hand, they cannot expect 
to retain at once the privileges of a public, and the 
irresponsibilities of a private, corporation. Academic 
privileges, like the political or social privileges of 
individuals and families, whether directly conferred 
by the State or merely acquiesced in by it as a tra- 
ditionary survival, exist for public purposes, and the 
return which the universities are expected to give is 
not only philosophical and scientific guidance to the 
nation, but also that training for public life to which 
the American writer refers in the passage quoted 
above. And this they give, I think, not so much in 
the formation of character as in the furnishing of 
ideas and principles of action, which give direction 
and purpose to character already largely formed by 
the home and the school. 

Let the governing members of universities them- 
selves realize that they are members of scientific cor- 
porations. This they can never truly be while they 
use their resources for the enrichment of individuals, 
and not for the general academic good. They have, 
in their primary idea and organization, far more 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES. 291 

affinity to the monastic community than to the shop. 
Whatever intrinsic differences there may be in the 
subjects taught and the persons teaching them, all 
the members of the encyclopaedic body are to be 
recognized as discharging functions equally important 
in their relation to the universal scientific aim and to 
the practical wants of the nation. 

From the fact that purely professional training 
pays, there has always been a tendency in univer- 
sities themselves to look too exclusively to the prac- 
tical aim of their existence, and to lose sight of the 
purely scientific function. Even after the great wave 
of the revival had passed over them, they failed to 
realize this function. We find Lord Verulam com- 
plaining of the narrow aims of the university as under- 
stood in his own time. In his "Advancement of 
Learning " he says, " First, then, among so many great 
foundations of colleges in Europe, I find it strange 
that they are all dedicated to professions, and none 
left free to arts and sciences at large. For, if men 
judge that learning should be referred to action, they 
judge well ; but in this they fall into the error de- 
scribed in the ancient fable, in which the other parts 
of the body did suppose the stomach had been idle 
because it neither performed the office of motion 
as the limbs do, nor of sense as the head doth ; but 
yet, notwithstanding, it is the stomach that digesteth 
and distributeth to all the rest. So that if any man 
thinks philosophy and universality to be idle studies, 



292 MEDIEVAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITIES. 

he doth not consider that all professions are from 
thence served and supplied. And this I take to be 
a great cause that hath hindered the profession of 
learning, because these fundamental knowledges have 
been studied but in passage. For if you will have 
a tree bear more fruit than it used to do, it is not 
anything you can do to the boughs, but it is the 
stirring of the earth and putting new mould about 
the roots that must work it." Lord Verulam, hope- 
less of reforming existing institutions, had formed 
the conception of a great university, which should be 
the mother of others, and which should be devoted 
entirely to the investigation and dissemination of 
scientific truth. In the "New Atlantis" the father 
of Solomon's House sketches an university on a vast 
scale, not yet, nor ever likely to be, realized. The 
movement of late years for the endowment of research 
is thus only the revival of a Baconian dream. Dr. 
DoUinger also speaks of universities as " corporations 
devoted to the advancement of the kingdom of know- 
ledge by means of investigation and literary produc- 
tivity." Nay, more, as " the supreme court of appeal 
in things of the mind." It is from this point of view 
that he ventures to say that " Oxford and Cambridge 
are as far removed from what we call an university as 
heaven from earth" — are, in fact, only big schools where 
mere gymnasium work is prolonged. We are content 
to be less exacting than Bacon and D5llinger, and to 
be satisfied if we see the combination of scientific re- 



UNIVERSITY STUDIES, 293 

search with the professional instruction of youth ; and 
we believe that the one is essential to the life and 
virility of the other. A professor's true attitude was 
well expressed a thousand years ago by a humanist 
born long before his time — the eminent Loup de 
Ferrieres — in a letter to Charles the Bald : ** I desire 
to teach what I have learned and am daily learning^ * 

* Crevier, i. 57, edit. 1761. 



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ROM FLAG TO FLAG. A Woman's Adventures 
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Homer. By W. E. Gladstone. 
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Brooke. 
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Philology. By J. Peile. 
English Composition. By J. 

NiCHOL. 

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Chemistry. By H. E. Roscoe. ? 
Physics. By Balfour Stewart. 3 
Geology. By A. Geikie. ? 

Botany. By J. D. Hooker. 5 

Astronomy. By J. N. Lockyer. 1 
Physical Geography. By A. > 

Geikie. ) 

Political Economy. By W. S. ^ 

JavoNS. \ 

Logic. By W. S. Jevons. ) 

History of Europe. By E. A. \ 

Freeman. I, 

History of France. By C. M. ( 

YONGE. J 

History of Rome. By M. Creigh- 

TON. 

History of Greece, By C. A. 

Fyffe. 
Old Greek Life. By J. P. Ma- 

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Roman Antiquities. By A. S. 

WiLKINS. 

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Euripides. By J. P. Mahaffy. > 
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Livy. By W. W. Capes. 5 

Demosthenes. By S. H. Butcher. ? 
Milton. By S. A. Brooke, > 



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The Fathers of the Third Century. 

By Rev. G. A. Jackson. 
Thomas Carlyle: His Life, his Books, 

his Theories. By A. H. Guernsey. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher 

and Poet. By A. H. Guernsey. 
Macaulay: His Life, his Writings. By 

C. H. Jones. 
Short Life of Charles Dickens. By 

C. H. Jones, 
Short Life of Gladstone, By C, H. 

Jones, 
Ruskin on Painting. 
Town Geology. By Charles Kingsley, 
The Childhood of Religions. By E. 

Clodd. 
History of the Early Church. By 

E. M. Sewell, 
The Art of Speech. Poetry and Prose, 

By L. T. Townsend. 
The Art of Speech. Eloquence and 

Logic. By L. T. Townsend. 
The World's Paradises. By S. G. W. 

Benjamin. 
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G. T. Ferris. 
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T. Ferris. 
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T. Ferris. 
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D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

JDECENT ECONOMIC CHANGES, and their Ef^ 
J- *- feet on the Production and Distribution of Wealth and the 
Well-being of Society. By David A. Wells, LL. D., D. C. L., 
Membre Correspondant de I'Institut de France; Correspou- 
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A STUDY OF MEXICO. By David A. Wells. 

-^— ^ Reprinted, with Additions, from "The Popular Science 
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nmiNGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN; A 

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